Russian forces have launched a missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv’s mayor said, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his nightly video address that Russia was preparing new attacks on energy targets, bridges and other infrastructure.
Debris from Saturday’s attack damaged a residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
“Explosions in the Kyiv suburbs. The enemy is hitting infrastructure with ballistic missiles,” Klitschko wrote on Telegram.
Klitschko said debris had struck a five-storey apartment building in a western district of the capital. The facade of another residential building was also damaged.
The city’s military administration said on Telegram that two people were injured and a building housing a kindergarten was damaged.
Officials continued to warn residents of the potential for more strikes hours after the attack.
The attacks come as Zelenskyy said his government is seeking specific guarantees from Western allies on how post-war security support would function. He made comments in an interview aired late on Thursday, following two days of discussions among allies in Brussels.
The talks in Brussels discussed post-war reconstruction, funding for next year and security guarantees backed by the Ukrainian government’s Western allies.
The meetings brought together officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the European Union, along with representatives from the World Bank and the US investment group BlackRock, Ukrainian lead negotiator Rustem Umerov wrote in an online post.
US-led talks
The attacks occurred three days before US-led Ukrainian-Russian talks were to open in Abu Dhabi seeking a resolution to the war that has gone on for more than four years. The last such talks took place in February.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump said a deal between Russia and Ukraine may be imminent, following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, at the White House.
Trump said he did not meet the Ukrainian delegation on Thursday.
The meeting between the US president and Dmitriev came on the same day as First Lady Melania Trump hosted a diplomatic gathering with Russian and Ukrainian representatives to mark and build on a localised truce she helped broker in the southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky in October.
The truce expired last Sunday, a day before a Russian bombing of an aid distribution point in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhia region.
The death toll from the attack has risen to 50, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said on Friday, making it one of the deadliest strikes on civilians this year.
