Russian strikes kill 12 and hit condo block in Kyiv, officers say

Twelve individuals have been killed and greater than 130 others wounded in a barrage of Russian drones and missiles that struck a number of districts of Kyiv and introduced down an condo block in a single day, metropolis officers have stated.

A six-year-old boy and his mom have been among the many useless, as greater than two dozen areas throughout the Ukrainian capital have been hit.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko stated 12 kids have been among the many wounded – the most important variety of kids wounded in Kyiv in a single night time because the full-scale struggle started.

Russian assaults have continued regardless of US President Donald Trump’s risk to impose harder sanctions on Moscow if Vladimir Putin doesn’t conform to a ceasefire by 8 August.

The high-pitched hum of Russian drones could possibly be heard for hours over the town, interrupted by the occasional loud thunder clap of a missile strike.

Russia launched 309 drones and eight cruise missiles throughout the night time, in keeping with Ukraine’s air pressure. And though officers say air defences did handle to destroy lots of them, there have been quite a few hits together with from cruise missiles.

A red-orange glow indicated destruction on the bottom.

These have been the most important airstrikes since Trump introduced ahead an earlier deadline to Putin. The specter of extra US sanctions seems to have completed little to steer the Russian president to alter course.

In the meantime, Russia claimed additional success on the battlefield, declaring that it had captured the strategically necessary hilltop city of Chasiv Yar within the jap Donetsk area.

Ukraine denied it had fallen, nonetheless, and army analysts stated preventing there was persevering with.

Three of the fatalities in Kyiv have been on the web site of the residential condo block.

“A complete entrance was destroyed. Rescuers are clearing the rubble,” stated Ukraine’s inside minister Ihor Klymenko.

Twelve of the 135 wounded have been kids, in keeping with the Kyiv mayor, who stated 30 individuals remained in hospital by mid-afternoon.

President Volodymyr Zelensky stated the capital was the main focus of Russia’s in a single day assaults.

“The world has but once more seen Russia’s response to our, America’s and Europe’s need for peace. Extra demonstrative homicide,” he stated on social media.

“This is the reason peace with out power is unattainable.”

Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi and Solomyansky districts have been hit hardest within the assault, the place one individual was killed and 20 extra have been injured, in keeping with Inside minister Ihor Klymenko.

The home windows of a hospital ward for kids in Shevchenkivskyi district have been blown out by a shockwave, Kyiv’s mayor stated on Telegram.

One of many metropolis’s larger schooling establishments, a faculty and a kindergarten have been additionally broken.

International Minister Andrii Sybiha stated it was a “horrible morning” in Kyiv, and that there are “nonetheless individuals below the rubble”.

Sybiha added that Trump had been “very beneficiant and affected person” with Putin, however now it was time to place “most strain on Moscow” by sanctions.

Earlier in July, Trump set a 50-day deadline for the Kremlin to succeed in a truce with Kyiv or danger financial penalties.

On Monday, throughout a go to to the UK, Trump reduce that deadline to “ten or 12 days”, expressing his disapproval at Putin’s actions in Ukraine, greater than three years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the nation.

Trump did not say whether or not he felt the Russian president had been “mendacity” to him, however he stated there was a discrepancy between Putin’s rhetoric throughout their one-on-one conversations and the missiles “lobbed” on Ukrainian cities.

“We have been going to have a ceasefire and possibly peace… and rapidly you might have missiles flying into Kyiv and different locations,” Trump stated.

In the meantime, on the entrance line in jap Ukraine, Kyiv denied Russian claims that the city of Chasiv Yar had lastly fallen, after a battle for it that started in April final yr.

Little stays of Chasiv Yar after 16 months of preventing, however Ukrainian reviews cited army officers as saying the Russians have been spreading disinformation.

Open-source intelligence undertaking DeepState recommended that the Russians had taken management of jap and northern components of Chasiv Yar, however preventing was nonetheless happening in different areas.

Controlling the excessive floor that it sits on would give Russia a major vantage level to focus on the massive cities of the Donetsk area to the west, together with Druzhivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Ukrainian forces have confronted superior Russian manpower on the entrance traces all through the struggle, however reported shortages within the east have left one other key Russian goal more and more weak.

The city of Pokrovsk lies about 60km (37 miles) to the south-west of Chasiv Yar and is described as the most popular spot on the entrance line at this level of the struggle. Analysts are involved that the hundreds of Ukrainians defending the town could possibly be liable to encirclement from Russian troops.