Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine killed six people, including two children, and forced power outages nationwide, officials said on Wednesday, as plans for a summit of Russian and US leaders were shelved after Moscow rejected a ceasefire.
US president Donald Trump had announced last week that he and Vladimir Putin would meet soon in Hungary to try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
But Mr Putin has been unwilling to consider concessions. Moscow has long demanded that Ukraine agree to cede more territory before any ceasefire.
Mr Trump, asked by reporters about the prospect for a summit, said he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” but suggested there could be more developments and that “we’ll be notifying you over the next two days” about them.
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Kirill Dmitriev, Mr Putin’s investment envoy, said in a social media post that “preparations continue” for a summit.
Russia reiterated its long-standing terms for a peace deal in a private communique known as a “non paper” that it sent to the US last weekend, according to two US officials and two people familiar with the situation.
Debris from downed weapons strewed the Ukrainian capital overnight, sparking fires in half its districts, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, posted on the Telegram messaging app.
“Ukraine long ago agreed to the US proposal for a ceasefire, while Moscow is doing everything to keep the killing going,” Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, posted on Telegram after the latest Russian attacks.
“This means collective actions against Putin are currently insufficient, and we must all do more together to make him stop killing our people.”
Two people were killed in the Kyiv attack, while four, including two children, died in the aftermath of Russian strikes on the surrounding region, Ukraine’s emergency service said.
Ten people were rescued from a fire in a high-rise building in Kyiv’s district of Dniprovskyi, said the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, with a child among the five admitted to hospital across the city.
Officials said fires also broke out in the districts of Desnianskyi, Darnytskyi and Pecherskyi, the last home to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a symbol of Ukrainian spiritual and cultural history.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks took place through most of the night and early Wednesday, initially with ballistic missiles and subsequently drone strikes.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
“All night the enemy struck the country’s energy infrastructure,” energy minister Svitlana Hrynchuk posted on Telegram, with no details.
In a separate post the ministry said there were emergency power outages in most regions of Ukraine as a result of the Russian attack on energy infrastructure, including in Kyiv and the region surrounding it.
In the central region of Poltava, oil and gas facilities were damaged in the Myrhorod district by the Russian attack, the regional governor said.
In the frontline southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, which has been subject to continued strikes and shelling by Russian forces, 13 people were wounded in overnight attacks, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on Wednesday.
Russia has consistently hit Ukrainian energy facilities since launching a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, maintaining they are a legitimate military target in the war.
A Tuesday attack on Ukraine killed four and left hundreds of thousands without power and many without water in what Kyiv said was Moscow’s latest salvo in a campaign to break its neighbour’s energy system ahead of winter.
