At least six people were killed and more than 50 others injured after a barrage of Russian drones and missiles struck Kyiv overnight, Ukrainian officials said.
One of the dead includes a six-year-old boy, while three other fatalities were confirmed at the site of an apartment block which collapsed following a strike.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said the death toll could rise, with damage in more than two dozen locations across the Ukrainian capital.
Russian attacks have continued despite US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tougher sanctions on Moscow if Russian leader Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire by 8 August.
Igor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said: “One of the strikes hit a residential high-rise building, an entire entrance was destroyed. Rescuers are clearing the rubble.”
Kyiv’s Sviatoshynsky and Solomyansky districts were hit hardest in the attack, where one person was killed and 20 more were injured, according to Klymenko.
The windows of a hospital ward for children in Shevchenkivsky district were blown out by a shockwave, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram.
One of Kyiv’s higher education institutions, a school and a kindergarten were also damaged during the attack.
In a post on X, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it was a “horrible morning” in Kyiv, and that there are “still people under the rubble”.
Sybiha added that Trump had been “very generous and patient” with Putin, but now it was time to put “maximum pressure on Moscow” through sanctions.
ReutersEarlier in July, Trump set a 50-day deadline for the Kremlin to reach a truce with Kyiv or risk economic penalties.
On Monday, during a visit to the UK, Trump cut that deadline to “ten or 12 days”, expressing his disapproval at Putin’s actions in Ukraine, more than three years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the country.
Trump didn’t say whether he felt the Russian president had been “lying” to him, but he said there was a discrepancy between Putin’s rhetoric during their one-on-one conversations and the missiles “lobbed” on Ukrainian cities.
“We were going to have a ceasefire and maybe peace… and all of a sudden you have missiles flying into Kyiv and other places,” Trump said.