Russian forces launched a major drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight, killing 18 people, in what the city’s mayor has described as the “most massive attack” on the Ukrainian capital.
Vitaly Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning and said around 90 people were injured. He said an ambulance station was among the places hit in the strikes.
Although previous attacks have killed more people, this latest barrage deployed the largest number of weapons on the capital and hit locations over a very wide area of Kyiv.
Several neighbourhoods were evacuated as strikes rocked buildings throughout the city, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Russia was preparing an attack.
Moscow said its forces hit what they called military plants in retaliation against attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that Russia would “continue to increase pressure on the Kyiv regime in order to achieve our set goals”.
Ukraine accused Moscow of targeting civilian areas and said it would be wrong to equate the actions of the “aggressor and a country defending itself”.
Children were among the “significant number” of casualties, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said.
“The enemy is once again deliberately targeting residential areas and killing civilians,” he said early on Thursday.
