Four people died after Russia unleashed a massive combined attack on Kyiv, sparking fires and scattering debris across many districts of the capital, Ukrainian authorities said.
At least 27 people were injured as emergency crews responded to multiple strikes, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration.
At least 430 drones and 18 missiles were used in the attack across the country, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
He said the attack, which struck other regions of the country, was targeting Kyiv.
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“A specially calculated attack to cause as much harm as possible to people and civilians,” Mr Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram.
He added the Azerbaijan embassy was damaged by fragments of an Iskander missile.
Fifteen people were taken to hospital, including one man in critical condition and a pregnant woman, after a series of powerful explosions sounded in the city and airs defences were activated.
City authorities warned that power and water outages are possible.
Officials said falling debris and fires damaged high-rise apartment buildings, a school, a medical facility and administrative buildings in areas scattered throughout the city of three million people.
“The Russians are hitting residential buildings. There are a great many damaged multi-storey apartment buildings, in practically every district,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said both drones and missiles had been deployed and emergency crews were dispatched to several neighbourhoods.
Pictures posted on social media showed different sites in flames and residents gathering in rubble-strewn streets outside apartment buildings.
The governor of Kyiv region outside the capital said drone and missile attacks injured one person and triggered fires in several localities.
Ukraine’s air force reported that Russian drones and guided bombs were targeting several other regions.
The strike came as European Union officials warned this week that Ukraine must continue to crack down on corruption following a major scandal that has put top nuclear energy officials under scrutiny.
But they also offered assurances that aid will continue to flow as Kyiv strains to hold back Russia’s invasion.
Meanwhile, Russia’s FSB security service said on Friday that it had thwarted a Ukrainian plot to assassinate an unnamed top Russian government official and accused Kyiv of planning similar attacks in other parts of the country.
The FSB said in a statement that the Ukrainian plot had aimed to kill the official when they visited their relatives’ graves at a Moscow cemetery.
Reuters could not independently verify the FSB’s assertion, but Ukraine has targeted Russian military and other officials inside Russia since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. - AP/Reuters
