Children among victims in Russian strikes, hours after Trump-Putin talks shelved 5 hours ago Paul Kirby,Europe digital editor and John Sudworth,Kyiv At least seven people have been killed including two children during intense Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, officials say.
The Kremlin has rejected calls for a ceasefire along the current front lines made both by Trump and European leaders.
However, Russian officials said on Wednesday that preparation for a Trump-Putin summit was continuing, disputing the US president’s assessment that it had been put on hold.
A couple in their 60s were killed when a drone hit their high-rise building in the city, and four people were killed in the wider Kyiv region.
Across Ukraine, Russian attacks once again targeted energy infrastructure and emergency power outages were imposed in several areas.
Russian strikes target children just hours after Trump-Putin talks were canceled.
five hours prior.
Paul Kirby is the digital editor for Europe.
Ukraine’s John Sudworth.
Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine have killed at least seven people, including two children, according to officials.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, a kindergarten was struck, and Kyiv suffered extensive damage. 27 people were injured, including children.
Just hours before, US President Donald Trump announced that he had canceled his plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest because he did not want the meeting to be a “wasted meeting.”.
According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the attacks demonstrated that Moscow had not been sufficiently pressured to end the war.
The Kremlin has denied calls from European leaders and Trump for a ceasefire along the current front lines.
Russian officials, however, denied the US president’s assessment that the Trump-Putin summit preparations had been halted, stating on Wednesday that they were still underway.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, stated that meticulous planning was required and that a date had not yet been decided.
The majority of the “gossip and rumors” about a summit, he claimed, were false, and that it was “the mutual desire of both presidents.”.
See also: Ukraine uses missiles made in the UK to strike a Russian chemical plant.
Why Trump is unable to work with Putin on Ukraine despite his success in Gaza.
Days after discussing with Trump in Washington last Friday and failing to convince the US president to provide long-range Tomahawk missiles, Ukraine’s president arrived in Norway on Wednesday at the beginning of a European trip.
Trump’s plan to freeze the front line is a “good compromise, but I’m not sure that Putin will support it and I said it to the president,” Zelensky told reporters in Oslo.
“As soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further away for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy,” the Ukrainian leader said, expressing a direct connection between his request for US Tomahawks and the cancellation of the planned Trump-Putin summit. “..”.
Soon after Ukraine’s military claimed to have used Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK to attack a Russian chemical plant in the Bryansk border region late Tuesday, Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles.
According to military officials, the Bryansk plant “produces gunpowder, explosives, and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine.” They called the strike “a successful hit” that broke through the Russian air defense system.
Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital overnight, the first such attacks in nearly two weeks, following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A drone struck a high-rise building in the city, killing a couple in their 60s, and four people were killed throughout the Kyiv region.
Their home in the village of Pohreby, just north of the capital, was set on fire by a Russian strike, killing a 12-year-old girl, a 36-year-old woman, and a six-month-old infant. Later on, a man in a nearby village passed away from his wounds.
A 40-year-old man was killed and seven others injured in a drone strike on a kindergarten, Kharkiv officials later reported. Six people, including children, were injured, and dozens more were evacuated, they said.
Russia sent 405 drones and 28 missiles, including 15 ballistic missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force.
Explosions reverberated throughout the night as the capital was under a ballistic missile warning. Rescue crews battled residential building fires by morning.
Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Ukraine have resumed, and several regions have experienced emergency power outages.
The air raids had continued all night and were unquestionably an attack on the power supply, according to Inna Sovsun, a Kyiv MP, who spoke on the BBC’s Newsday program: “For the majority like myself it means we don’t have electricity and we don’t have water.”. “,”.
