A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s capital has killed three people in their homes, authorities have said.
At least 29 people were injured, seven of them children, overnight into Sunday, in what was the second consecutive nighttime attack on Kyiv to claim civilian lives.
Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said a 19-year-old woman and her 46-year-old mother were among those killed.
Russian drones caused fires in two residential buildings in the capital’s Desnianskyi district. Emergency crews evacuated civilians from a nine-storey building and a 16-storey complex, put out flames and cleared the rubble.
Olha Yevhenivha, 74, said there was so much smoke from the fire she could not leave her apartment.
“Even until now our windows are totally black from the smoke, and it was impossible to go down, so that’s why we put wet blankets on our doors and balcony,” she said.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 101 drones overnight into Sunday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, of which 90 were shot down and neutralised by Ukrainian forces.
However, five strike drones hit four locations. Debris from shot-down drones fell on five locations, the statement added.
The attack came a day after a mass Russian missile and drone attack killed four people, including two in the capital, prompting fresh pleas from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Western air defence systems.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces struck energy facilities and rail infrastructure serving Ukraine’s war effort on Saturday, as well as other military targets such as troop deployment points and a drone factory.
It did not comment specifically on strikes on Kyiv, or on the civilian casualties reported by Ukraine.
In Russia’s Bryansk region near Ukraine, two civilians were taken to hospital following Ukrainian drone strikes, according to regional Governor Alexander Bogomaz.
At least 26 Ukrainian drones were downed over southwestern Russia on Sunday, according to the defence ministry in Moscow.
Elsewhere, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country had tested a new atomic-powered missile that can carry a nuclear warhead and confound existing defences, according to remarks released on Sunday.
The announcement, which followed years of tests, comes as part of nuclear messaging from the Kremlin, which has resisted Western pressure for a ceasefire in Ukraine and strongly warned the US and other Nato allies against sanctioning strikes deep inside Russia with longer-range Western weapons.
Earlier this week, Mr Putin directed drills of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces that featured practice missile launches. The exercise came as his planned summit on Ukraine with US President Donald Trump was put on hold, the latest twist in Trump’s stop-and-go effort to resolve the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in remarks taped on Saturday that a date for the summit has not been agreed, and that Mr Trump was the one to postpone it after initially suggesting it could take place by the end of the month.
But Mr Peskov insisted that the summit had not been cancelled, and said recent US sanctions against Russia’s top oil companies were not a reason to abandon dialogue.
“The presidents can’t meet for the sake of meeting; they can’t waste their time, and they’re open about it,” he said in an interview with Russian state TV released on Sunday, describing peace talks as “a complex process”.
