A pall of acrid smoke hung over Kyiv on Friday morning following a night of intensive Russian strikes that hit almost every district of the Ukrainian capital, injuring 23 people, officials say.<\/p>\n
The hours of darkness were punctuated by the staccato of air defence guns, buzz of drones and large explosions. Ukraine said Russia fired a record 550 drones and 11 missiles.<\/p>\n
The strikes came hours after a call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which Trump said he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Moscow says war will continue for as long as it is necessary to reach its objectives.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s overnight air strikes broke another record, Ukraine\u2019s air force said, with 72 of the 550 dronespenetrating air defences \u2013 up from a previous record of 537 launched last Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Air raid alerts sounded for more than eight hours asseveral waves of attacks struck Kyiv, the \u201cmain target of the strikes\u201d, the air force said on the messaging app Telegram.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned one of the most \u201cdemonstratively significant and cynical\u201d attacks of the war, describing a \u201charsh, sleepless night\u201d.<\/p>\n
Noting that it came directly after Putin\u2019s call with Trump, Zelensky added in a post on Telegram: \u201cRussia once again demonstrates that it does not intend to end the war\u201d.<\/p>\n
He called on international allies \u2013 particularly the US \u2013 to increase pressure on Moscow and impose greater sanctions.<\/p>\n
Footage shared on social media by Ukraine\u2019s state emergency service showed firefighters battling to extinguish fires in Kyiv after Russia\u2019s large-scale overnight attack.<\/p>\n
According to Ukrainian authorities, railway infrastructure was damaged and schools, buildings and cars set ablaze across the capital.<\/p>\n
Poland\u2019s Foreign Minister, Rados\u0142aw Sikorski, said the Polish consulate had also been damaged.<\/p>\n
The Russian strikes also hit the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Chernihiv.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s defence ministry said the \u201cmassive strike\u201d had been launched in response to the \u201cterrorist acts of the Kyiv regime\u201d.<\/p>\n
The acting governor of Russia\u2019s southern Rostov region said a woman was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a village not far from the border on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s attacks were the latest in a string of major Russian air strikes on Ukraine that have intensified in recent weeks as ceasefire talks have largely stalled.<\/p>\n
War in Ukraine has been raging for more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n
Following his conversation with Putin on Thursday, Trump said that \u201cno progress\u201d to end the fighting had been made.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don\u2019t think he\u2019s there, and I\u2019m very disappointed,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying I don\u2019t think he\u2019s looking to stop, and that\u2019s too bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kremlin reiterated that it would continue to seek to remove \u201cthe root causes of the war in Ukraine\u201d. Putin has sought to return Ukraine to Russia\u2019s sphere of influence and said last week that \u201cthe whole of Ukraine is ours\u201d.<\/p>\n
Responding to Trump\u2019s comments on Friday, Putin\u2019s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC that as long as it was not possible to secure Russia\u2019s aims through political-diplomatic means, \u201cwe are continuing our Special Military Operation\u201d \u2013 Russia\u2019s preferred name for the invasion.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, President Zelensky said that he hoped to speak to Trump about the supply of US weapons after a decision in Washington to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including those used for air defences.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has warned that the move would impede its ability to defend Ukraine against escalating airstrikes and Russian advances on the frontlines.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters, Trump said \u201cwe\u2019re giving weapons\u201d and \u201cwe haven\u2019t\u201d completely paused the flow of weapons. He blamed former President Joe Biden for \u201cemptying out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pall of acrid smoke hung over Kyiv on Friday morning following a night of intensive Russian strikes that hit almost every district of the Ukrainian capital, injuring 23 people, officials say. The hours of darkness were punctuated by the staccato of air defence guns, buzz of drones and large explosions. Ukraine said Russia fired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}