Russian strikes kill 16 people in Kyiv, including two children

By Anastasiia Malenko

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia launched waves of missiles and drones on Kyiv before dawn on Thursday, killing 16 people including two children, and wounding well over 100 others, officials in the Ukrainian capital said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking earlier in his nightly video address, put the death toll at 14 and said rescue operations were continuing into the evening. The Interior Ministry said more than 1,200 police and rescuers were tackling the aftermath.

Ukraine's national rescue service said the toll rose to 16 after another body had been retrieved from underneath rubble.

Zelenskiy said dozens remained in hospital.

The rescue service said 16 of the injured were children, the largest number of children hurt in a single attack on the city since Russia started its full-scale invasion almost 3-1/2 years ago.

In an earlier post on Telegram, the president said Russia had launched more than 300 drones and eight missiles. "Today the world has once again seen Russia's response to our desire for peace ... Therefore, peace without strength is impossible." 

City authorities announced a day of mourning to be held on Friday.

Russia's Defence Ministry said it targeted and hit Ukrainian military airfields and ammunition depots as well as businesses linked to what it called Kyiv's military-industrial complex. 

Explosions rocked Kyiv from about midnight onward and blazes lit up the night sky. 

Yurii Kravchuk, 62, stood wrapped in a blanket next to a damaged building with a bandage around his head. He had heard the missile alert but did not get to a shelter in time, he told Reuters.

"I started waking up my wife and then there was an explosion. My daughter ended up in the hospital," he said.

Russia, which denies targeting civilians, has stepped up air strikes in recent months on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines of the war.

Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed since Moscow invaded in 2022.

Kyiv and Moscow have held three rounds of talks in Istanbul this year that yielded exchanges of prisoners and bodies, but no breakthrough to defuse the conflict.

BURNING RUINS

At one location in Kyiv, rescuers spent more than three hours reaching a man trapped in rubble by cutting through the wall of a neighbouring apartment, the Interior Ministry said. 

The man talked to the emergency services during the operation and was pulled out alive, it added.

A five-month-old baby was among the wounded, with five children hospitalized, the head of Kyiv's military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said on national television.

Schools and hospitals were among the buildings damaged across 27 locations in the capital, officials said.

"The attack was extremely insidious and deliberately calculated to overload the air defence system," Zelenskiy wrote on X.

He posted a video of burning ruins, saying people were still trapped under the rubble of one partially-ruined residential building as of the morning. 

U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, sharply criticized Russia's "disgusting" behavior against Ukraine and said he planned to impose sanctions on Moscow if no agreement could be reached.

Trump said he was not sure whether sanctions would deter Russia. He has given Russian President Vladimir Putin until August 8 to make a deal or else he will respond with economic pressure.

Trump said U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff would travel to Russia after his current trip to Israel.

A senior U.S. diplomat, John Kelly, told the United Nations Security Council that Trump had made clear that he wants a deal to end the war by August 8.

On Tuesday, Trump said Washington will start imposing tariffs and other measures on Russia if Moscow shows no progress toward ending the conflict.

"This is Putin's response to Trump's deadlines," Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. "The world must respond with a tribunal and maximum pressure."

The air force reported five direct missile hits and 21 drone hits in 12 locations. Ukrainian air defence units downed 288 drones and three cruise missiles, the air force added.

(Additional reporting by Max Hunder and Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Ron Popeski, David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis)