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At least 14 people were killed and 44 others were injured in a Russian attack on Kyiv overnight, Ukraine’s interior minister said this morning after both sides exchanged attacks. Photos of the missile attack on Kyiv showed the skies turning orange and red, as mayor Vitali Klitschko said a barrage of Russian drones and missiles damaged an apartment building and sparked fires. A kindergarten was also attacked.
The major aerial attack came just hours after president Donald Trump said it was a mistake to throw Russia out of what was formerly the G8, comments that are likely to infuriate Ukraine and other western allies.
“This was a big mistake,” Mr Trump said, adding he believed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Russian president Vladimir Putin not been ejected from the high-profile group of nations. “Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else … he’s not a happy person about it,” Mr Trump said.
14 killed, 40 injured in major Russian attack on Kyiv overnight
At least 14 people were killed and 44 others were injured in a Russian attack on Kyiv overnight, Ukraine’s interior minister said this morning. The attack damaged residential buildings, educational institutions and critical infrastructure facilities, minister Ihor Klymenko said on his Telegram channel.
US president Donald Trump made a brief one-day visit to the G7 summit in Canada on Monday and largely made headlines for expressing unhappiness over the 2014 expulsion of Vladimir Putin from the group. “This was a big mistake,” Mr Trump said, adding he believed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Putin not been ejected from the high-profile group of nations. “I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago,” he said.
“They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake, even though I wasn’t in politics then. “Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else … he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him,” Mr Trump said. Mr Trump stopped short of saying Russia should be reinstated in the group.
His remarks come at a time when European nations say they want to persuade the US president to back tougher sanctions against Moscow. The US leader has indicated that he would rather have the G7 become the G8 or possibly even the G9, adding Russia and China as authoritarian governments to an organisation whose members are otherwise democracies. “It was a rough start,” said Josh Lipsky, a former senior IMF official who now chairs the international economics department at the Atlantic Council.
At least 16 people were injured after waves of Russian drones and missiles struck districts across the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early this morning, city officials said. The barrage of drones and missiles used to attack Ukrainian cities damaged an apartment building and sparked fires. Witnesses told Reuters the drones swarmed over the capital and they also heard what appeared to be missiles overhead. An air raid alert remained in effect more than seven hours after it had been proclaimed.
Other parts of the country also came under attack, including areas outside the capital and the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where the regional governor reported at least four strikes. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that most of the 16 injured were in Solomianskyi district, near the city centre, where a drone damaged the top floor of an apartment building and other non-residential areas.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, noted 12 strikes in five districts. Among the targets was a kindergarten in the city’s eastern edge. “The capital is coming under a combined attack,” Tkachenko wrote. “The Russians are deploying missiles and strike drones. There are fires in different districts and emergency crews are at work.
“Waves of drones had attacked Solomianskyi district, he said. “This is a very difficult night,” he wrote, adding that there had been power cuts in some areas. Volodymyr Zelensky’s plans to discuss new weapons purchases for Ukraine with Donald Trump in Canada have been scrapped after the US president said he is leaving the Group of Seven summit a day early.
Mr Trump’s early exit is due to the evolving situation of conflict in the Middle East, the White House said. Mr Zelensky, who is visiting Austria, is set to attend the Group of Seven summit in Canada today, where he had hoped to meet Mr Trump on the sidelines of the meeting. “One of the questions that I will discuss with president Trump during the meeting is the defence package that Ukraine is ready to buy,” Mr Zelensky had told a news conference in Vienna.
French president Emmanuel Macron said Mr Trump’s departure was positive, given the objective to get a ceasefire in the Middle East. G7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US, along with the European Union, are convening in the resort area of Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies until this evening.
