Ukraine Russia live updates: Russian strikes on Ukraine kill four in Kyiv, mayor says

Russia intercepted Ukrainian drones overnight, defence ministry sayspublished at 06:35 British Summer Timepublished at 11:05

Russia’s Ministry of Defence says its air defences shot down 174 Ukrainian drones overnight. Russian state news agency Tass reports the ministry saying a number of attacks were launched by Ukraine on Moscow, Crimea and 11 other areas from around 20:00 local time (18:00 BST) last night.

Russia has launched multiple aerial assaults on Ukraine in the past few months, including more than 300 drones and missiles in a single night last week.

In that strike, Russia launched 367 drones and missiles against Ukraine – the largest number in a single night since Putin’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.

At least 12 people, including three children were killed and dozens more were injured.

At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the US’s silence on the attack: “This cannot be ignored. America’s silence, and the silence of others in the world, only encourages Putin.”

And for three consecutive nights in the last week of May, Russia targeted Ukraine with some of the heaviest aerial attacks across multiple regions, according to the Kyiv Independent paper.

Russia launched a large-scale attack across Ukraine overnight, with drones and missiles targeting Kyiv and other cities.

A photographer with the Reuters news agency reports that a drone caused a gaping hole in an apartment building in the Solomenskiy district, where concrete blocks had fallen and nearby cars were crushed.

Reuters reporters said they heard the sound of “Russian kamikaze drones buzzing in the sky, accompanied by the sounds of outgoing fire from Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire”.

They also reported explosions that were so powerful they caused windows to rattle on buildings far away from impact sites.

Outside Kyiv, Russia’s aerial raids have also targeted the city of Lutsk and the Ternophil region, both on Ukraine’s north-west.

Multiple strikes triggered fires in Ternophil, regional military administration chief Vyacheslav Negoda has said, according to the news agency. Negoda calls it the “most massive air attack on our region to date”. The strikes have wounded five people in Lutsk, where homes, schools and a government facility have been damaged, Mayor Igor Polishchuk says.

In Khmelnytsky city, the air raids have damaged some cars and buildings, according to the region’s governor. Here are the latest photos coming out of Kyiv, after the Ukrainian capital was hit by Russian drones and missiles hours ago.

The attack in Kyiv comes hours after US President Donald Trump’s meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, where Ukraine was on the agenda along with trade relations. During their meeting in the Oval Office, Trump compared the war in Ukraine to “two young children fighting like crazy”. “Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” he said, as Merz looked on in silence.

Trump said that he had given the same analogy to Putin earlier this week. Since his presidential campaign Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine – though since taking office he has made little progress and been criticised for not being tough enough on Russia.

Russia used 15 drones and six missiles in the attack on the northwestern Lutsk city, in the Volyn region, its mayor Ihor Polishchuk posted on his Telegram channel. Volyn is no longer under air raid alert.

Five people have been injured in the attack and there was no information on whether anyone had died, Polishchuk said. He also said that buildings and cars were damaged in the attack.

The attack on Kyiv today comes after the capital was hit by Russian strikes on 25 May, as part of a broader Russian attack across Ukraine.

That attack consisted of more than 350 “air attack vehicles”, including ballistic missiles and attack drones, Ukrainian authorities said. It killed 12 people across the country, and 16 people were injured in Kyiv.

Before that, the last strike was on 7 May. Kyiv has been the target of frequent, regular strikes since Russia began its war on Ukraine in February 2022. Tonight’s attacks on Ukraine, including on its capital city, comes a day Donald Trump shared that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine’s “Spider Web” drone attack on Russia that took out at least 40 warplanes.

The call took over an hour and Trump warned in a social media post that it would not “lead to immediate peace”. “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” the US President said. Much of Ukraine remains under air alert tonight, though the attack on the capital appears to be over.

Ukrainian officials say Russian drones and missiles have attacked Kyiv and witnesses reported seeing a series of explosions and fires. The head of Kyiv’s city military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said there was debris from downed enemy targets and reports of two preliminary casualties, in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

He also confirmed that three men were injured, two of them taken to hospital and one was treated at the scene. Earlier this week, Donald Trump said in his call with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president had vowed “very strongly” to respond to Ukraine’s recent drone attack on Russian airbases.