Kyiv hit by large-scale Russian drone and missile attack
Explosions were heard across the Ukrainian capital overnight.
The Ukrainian capital has been struck by a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack that left at least 15 people injured, officials said.
Explosions and machine gun fire were heard throughout Kyiv from Friday night into Saturday morning as many people sought shelter in subway stations.
The attack came hours after Russia and Ukraine began a major prisoner exchange of hundreds of soldiers and civilians, the first phase of a swap agreed on by the two sides at a meeting in Istanbul last week.
The second phase is expected to happen later on Saturday.
In talks held in Istanbul earlier this month that marked the first time the two sides met face-to-face for peace talks since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners of war and civilian detainees each.
It was a rare moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the three-year conflict.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 14 ballistic missiles and 250 Shahed drones overnight, officials said, adding that Ukrainian forces shot down six missiles and neutralised 245 drones – with 128 drones shot down and 117 thwarted using electronic warfare.
The Kyiv City Military Administration said it was one of the biggest combined missile and drone attacks on the capital.
“A difficult night for all of us,” the administration said in a statement.
The debris of intercepted missiles and drones fell in at least six city districts of the Ukrainian capital.
According to the acting head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, six people required medical care after the attack and two fires were sparked in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv.
The Obolon district, where a residential building was heavily damaged in the attack, was the hardest hit. There were at least five people injured in the area, the administration said.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, warned residents ahead of the attack that more than 20 Russian strike drones were heading toward the city. As the attack continued, he said drone debris fell on a shopping mall and a residential building in Obolon district of Kyiv. Emergency services were headed to the site, Mr Klitschko said.
The prisoner exchange has not heralded a halt in the fighting.
Battles continued along the roughly 620-mile front line, where tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed, and neither country has relented in its deep strikes.
After the meeting on May in Istanbul, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan called the prisoner swap a “confidence-building measure” and said the parties had agreed in principle to meet again.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that there has been no agreement yet on the venue for the next round of talks as diplomatic manoeuvres continued.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would give Ukraine a draft document outlining its conditions for a “sustainable, long-term, comprehensive” peace agreement, once the ongoing prisoner exchange had finished.
European leaders have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he tries to press his larger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.
The Istanbul meeting revealed that both sides remain far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting. One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had shot down 788 Ukrainian drones away from the battlefield between May 20 and May 23.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 175 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as a ballistic missile since late Thursday.
