Russia pummels Ukraine in record aerial attack as Trump says 'disappointed' in Putin

France 24

2 days ago

Russia pummelled Kyiv with drones in an all-night attack, injuring at least 23 people, damaging railway infrastructure and setting buildings and cars on fire throughout the city, authorities in the Ukrainian capital said early on Friday.
Air raid alerts lasted more than eight hours overnight with several waves of attacks, with Russia launching a total of 539 drones and 11 missiles targeting the Ukrainian territory, Ukraine 's Air Force said.
"The main target of the strikes was the capital of Ukraine, the city of Kyiv!" the Air Force said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Fourteen of the injured were hospitalised, Kyiv's Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said on Telegram.
Damage was recorded in six of Kyiv's 10 districts on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city and falling drone debris set a medical facility on fire in the leafy Holosiivskyi district, Klitschko said.
The attacks were the latest in a series of Russian air strikes on Kyiv that have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war on the city of three million people.
US President Donald Trump said that a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday resulted in no progress at all on efforts to end the war in Ukraine, while the Kremlin reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict's "root causes".
"I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed," Trump told reporters on his return to Washington from a trip to Iowa.
"I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad."
A decision by Washington earlier this week to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine prompted warnings by Kyiv that the move would weaken its ability to defend against intensifying airstrikes and battlefield advances.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he hopes to speak with Trump on Friday about the supply of US weapons.
Ukraine's state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia, the country's largest carrier, said on Telegram that the attack on Kyiv damaged railway infrastructure in the city, diverting a number of passenger trains and causing delays.
Reuters witnesses heard strings of explosions and constant barrages of fire in Kyiv overnight as air defence units tried to down the drones.
Social media videos showed people running to seek shelter, firefighters fighting blazes in the dark and ruined buildings with windows and facades blown out.
Ukraine's Air Force said that it had destroyed 478 of the air weapons Russia launched overnight. Enemy air strikes were recorded in eight locations across the country with nine missiles and 63 drones, it added.
Late on Thursday, Russian shelling killed five people in and near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a key target under Russian attack for months, Ukraine said.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.