Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv kills at least 13 people and injures more than 130
A 5-month-old girl was among 14 children wounded, Ukraine's Emergency Service said. It was the highest number of children injured in a single attack on Kyiv since the start of Russia's invasion three years ago, according to public records consulted by The Associated Press.
A large part of a nine-story residential building collapsed in the attack, City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said. Rescue teams searched for people trapped under the rubble.
Yana Zhabborova, 35, a resident of the damaged building, woke up to the sound of thundering explosions, which blew off the doors and windows of her home.
'It is just stress and shock that there is nothing left,' said Zhabborova, a mother of a 5-month-old infant and a 5-year-old child.
Russia fired 309 Shahed and decoy drones, and eight Iskander-K cruise missiles overnight, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted and jammed 288 strike drones and three missiles. Five missiles and 21 drones struck targets.
Russian troops also struck a residential 5-story building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, according to the head of Donetsk regional military administration Vadym Filashkin. He said one person was killed and at least 11 more injured.
At least 27 locations across Kyiv were hit by the attack, Tkachenko said, with the heaviest damage seen in the Solomianskyi and Sviatoshynskyi districts. More than 100 buildings were damaged in Kyiv, including homes, schools, kindergartens, medical facilities and universities, he said.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Thursday that it had shot down 32 Ukrainian drones overnight.
A drone attack had caused a fire at an industrial site in Russia's Penza region, local Gov. Oleg Melnichenko said. He didn't immediately give further details other than to say that there were no casualties.
In the Volgograd region, some trains were also halted after drone wreckage fell on local railway infrastructure, state rail operator Russian Railways said.
Russia's Defense Ministry also said that its forces took full control of the strategically important city of Chasiv Yar in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
Russian and Ukrainian troops have battled for control of Chasiv Yar for nearly 18 months. It includes a hilltop from which troops can attack other key points in the region that form the backbone of Ukraine's eastern defenses.
Victor Trehubov, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, denied Russia's claim.
'Just a fabrication, there wasn't even a change in the situation,' he told The Associated Press.
A report on Thursday from Ukraine's Army General Staff said there were seven clashes in Chasiv Yar in the past 24 hours. An attached map showed most of the town as being under Russian control.
DeepState, an open-source Ukrainian map widely used by the military and analysts, showed early Thursday that neighborhoods to the south and west of Chasiv Yar remained as so-called gray zones, or uncontrolled by either side.
The attack targeted the Kyiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Sumy, Mykolaiv regions, with Ukraine's capital being the primary target, President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
'Today, the world once again saw Russia's answer to our desire for peace with America and Europe,' Zelensky said. 'New demonstrative killings. That is why peace without strength is impossible.'
He called on Ukraine's allies to follow through on defense commitments and pressure Moscow toward real negotiations.
President Trump said Tuesday that he's giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline — Aug. 8 — for peace efforts to make progress, or Washington will impose punitive sanctions and tariffs.
Western leaders have accused Putin of dragging his feet in U.S.-led peace efforts in an attempt to capture more Ukrainian land.
Kullab writes for the Associated Press. Vasilisa Stepanenko and Illia Novikov contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Russia deploying 9,000 additional soldiers per month, Ukraine says
Russia is able to send an additional 9,000 soldiers per month to fight in Ukraine despite incurring heavy losses, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Tuesday. The Russian military aims to form another 10 divisions by the end of the year, Syrskyi wrote on Facebook. "We therefore have no choice but to continue mobilization measures, improve combat training and strengthen the drone component of our armed forces," the army chief said. Syrskyi put the number of Russian casualties in the war at more than 33,000 soldiers in July. Syrskyi said the situation was particularly critical in the frontline sections near Pokrovsk, Dobropillia and Novopavlivka in eastern Ukraine. In recent days, military observers from both sides have reported Russian territorial gains particularly near Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in the Donetsk region. Remaining Ukrainian forces are increasingly threatened to be cut off, with the remaining corridor to Ukrainian controlled areas only measuring some 15 kilometres, according to the reports. The situation for Ukrainian forces is reportedly also deteriorating in Kostiantynivka, a former industrial hub in the area. Ukraine has been defending itself against a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022. Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
What's known and not yet known about the Justice Department's scrutiny of Trump-Russia probe origins
Perhaps no issue continues to aggravate President Donald Trump more than the assessment by intelligence officials that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf and the investigation by law enforcement into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow to tip the outcome of the contest. Robert Mueller, the former FBI director tapped as special counsel by Trump's first Justice Department to investigate, found that Russia had waged a multi-prong operation in Trump's favor and that the Republican president's campaign welcomed the aid. But Mueller did not find sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up As president for a second time, Trump has made no secret of his desire to use the Justice Department as a weapon of retribution against perceived political adversaries he sees as having smeared him, including by calling for Obama-era officials to be jailed. Advertisement And his administration, now more broadly and across multiple agencies, has been engaged in a effort to reopen the long-accepted conclusion — including among prominent Republicans — of Russian interference and to scrutinize the officials involved in reaching that assessment. A Bondi grand jury directive Bondi, a Trump loyalist, has directed Justice Department prosecutors to present evidence related to the Russia inquiry to a grand jury. Grand juries are tools used by prosecutors to issue subpoenas for records and prosecutors and to produce indictments based on the evidence they receive. Advertisement The bar is low for an indictment given that the presentation of evidence by prosecutors is one-sided, though grand juries do have the option to decline to indict and have done so in the past. A person familiar with the matter confirmed Bondi's directive to The Associated Press but key questions remain. It was not disclosed, for instance, which prosecutors are pursuing the investigation, where the grand jury that might hear evidence is located and whether and when law enforcement officials might seek to bring criminal charges. The Justice Department, in an unusual statement last month, appeared to confirm the existence of an investigation into former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director James Brennan but provided no details or specifics. Potential targets of probe remain unclear It's not clear who might be targeted in the investigation, but the Trump administration has been aggressively challenging intelligence community conclusions about Russia's actions and intentions that had long ago seemed settled. It's been a welcome diversion for the administration as it confronts a wave of criticism from Trump's base and conservative influencers over the handling of records from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. In the last month, Trump administration officials and allies have released a series of documents aimed at casting doubt on the extent of interference and at portraying the original Russia investigation as an Obama administration frame-job. The documents have been hailed as incontrovertible proof of a conspiracy, but a close inspection of the records shows they fall well short of that. Among the documents released by Tulsi Gabbard, the administration's director of national intelligence, are emails from 2016 showing that Obama administration officials recognized in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to manipulate votes in favor of Trump. Advertisement But the absence of evidence that votes were switched — something the Obama administration never alleged — has no bearing on the ample evidence of other forms of Russia interference, including a hack-and-leak operation involving Democratic emails and a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord and spreading disinformation. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a previously classified annex of a 2023 report by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the first Trump administration to hunt for government misconduct in the Russia probe. The annex included a series of emails, including one from July 2016 that was purportedly sent by a senior staffer at a philanthropic organization founded by billionaire investor George Soros, that referred to a plan approved by then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to falsely link Trump to Russia. But Durham's own report took pain to note that investigators had not corroborated the communications as authentic and said the best assessment was that the message was 'a composites of several emails' the Russians had obtained from hacking — raising the likelihood that it was a product of Russian disinformation. Fresh scrutiny has also centered around the intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference, which was published in January 2017. An annex in a classified version of the assessment contained a summary of the so-called Steele dossier — a compilation of opposition research that included uncorroborated rumors and salacious gossip about Trump and Russia. Advertisement The latest in a series of investigations Just as Russian interference has been heavily scrutinized, so too has the U.S. government's response to it. Multiple government reports, including not only from Mueller but also a Republican-led Senate intelligence committee that included current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have documented Russia's activities in sweeping details. To be sure, reports from the Justice Department inspector general and Durham also identified significant flaws in the FBI's Russia investigation, including errors and omissions in applications the Justice Department submitted to a secretive surveillance court to eavesdrop on a national security adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign. But Durham found no criminal wrongdoing among government officials, bringing three criminal cases — two against private citizens that resulted in acquittals at trial and a third against a little-known FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email. It is unclear if there is any criminal wrongdoing that exists that Durham, who launched his investigation in 2019 and concluded it four years later, somehow missed during his sprawling inquiry.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Zelensky says Ukraine ready to ink drone deal with US as Trump ramps up pressure on Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Kyiv is ready to formalize a deal to send the US drones in exchange for American weapons following a 'productive conversation' with President Trump. 'The draft agreement on drones has already been prepared by the Ukrainian side, we are ready to discuss it in detail and conclude it. One of the strongest agreements this could be,' read an X statement by Zelensky, who told The Post in an interview last month that Ukraine would be happy to share its aerial technology with the US. 'The people of America need this technology, and you need to have it in your arsenal,' Zelensky saidat the time of Ukraine's unmanned aerial vehicles, which have been able to penetrate Russia's defenses and strike as deep as 800 miles into Moscow's territory. The Trump-Zelensky talk took place just a day before White House special envoy Steve Witkoff was due to visit Russia ahead of the US president's Aug. 8 deadline to bring its invasion of Ukraine to an end or face additional economic punishment. The Witkoff visit will take place at the request of the Kremlin, Russian officials have said. 'We are grateful to [Trump] for all efforts toward a just and lasting peace. It is truly a must to stop the killing as soon as possible, and we fully support this,' Zelensky began his statement on X. 'Many months could have already passed without war, had Russia not been prolonging it. Today, we coordinated our positions – Ukraine and the United States.' 3 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised President Trump for his plans to slap penalties on Russia. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP via Getty Images 3 President Trump initially sought to court Russia but has since soured on Vladimir Putin and embraced Ukraine. AP The two leaders also discussed Trump's plan to slap secondary tariffs or sanctions against countries that import oil from Moscow, with the goal of cutting off a key revenue stream for Putin's war machine. China and India are the largest importers of Russian oil, with Trump repeatedly threatening to ramp tariffs on New Delhi above the current 25% rate if the country's buying habits continue. 'I'm not worried about [oil] prices because we're drilling at levels that nobody's ever seen before,' Trump told CNBC's 'Squawk Box' Tuesday when asked whether the planned penalties would affect prices at the pump. 3 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have thawed out his once fraught relationship with President Trump. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP via Getty Images In June, Russia's economy minister admitted that the country is on the brink of a recession. Putin also announced that month that Moscow intended to reduce its defense budget despite the ongoing war. 'Their economy continues to decline, and that's exactly why Moscow is so sensitive to this prospect and President Trump's resolve. This can change a lot,' Zelensky said on X Tuesday. The Ukrainian president also made sure that Trump was up to speed on Russia's latest bloody drone and missile bombardments, which hit a record level in July. 'The Russians have intensified the brutality of their attacks. President Trump is fully informed about Russian strikes on Kyiv and other cities and communities,' Zelensky explained. 'Thank you to every American heart that supports our defense of life. Thank you, President Trump!' he concluded. Last month, Trump announced that the US would begin selling weapons to Ukraine, via European nations who would purchase firepower to donate to the war-torn nation.
