Ukraine has come under heavy Russian bombardment overnight, with a child among three people killed in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said early on Thursday.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack on Ukraine’s capital was “massive” with military officials confirming at least 24 people had been injured.
A five storey-building collapsed in the Darnytski district and a fire had also been reported in a high-rise residential building in the neighbouring Dnipro district, the mayor added.
The wave of missiles comes after more than 100,000 Ukrainian homes were left without power by the latest Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.
In a post on Telegram, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said the child who was killed was a 14 year old girl. At least five children had been injured in the latest drone strikes.
He noted more than 20 districts had been targeted, with many buildings including a kindergarten catching on fire.
Three and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fighting on the ground shows no sign of abating.
The latest international effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine was launched by US President Donald Trump earlier this month. He met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Zelensky with European leaders in Washington.
Trump had been pushing for a Putin-Zelensky summit. Ukraine’s president has backed the move, but he has sought security guarantees from Western allies to prevent any future Russian attack in the event of a peace deal.
On Tuesday, Zelensky met the head of Britain’s armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv, where they discussed efforts to end the war.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has said he would meet Ukrainian representatives in New York this week, telling Fox News “we talk to the Russians every day.”
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has warned that handing over Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal was a “trap”.