Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said 24 people, including three teenagers, died following a Russian missile attack that flattened a Kyiv apartment building.
Zelenskiy made his comments as he led the mourning for one of the deadliest attacks on the capital in the four-year-old war.
The cruise missile hit the nine-storey corner apartment block on Thursday during what the Ukrainian air force said was Russia’s biggest barrage on the country of the full-scale invasion.
Emergency workers finished digging through the rubble searching for victims after more than a day, Zelenskiy said on X.
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Crowds of grieving people – many of them children – streamed towards a makeshift memorial beneath a tree near the destroyed building.
Teenagers clutching bouquets arrived in groups and broke into tears as they approached the growing mound of flowers and stuffed toys beside photographs of the dead.
A portrait of a girl in a school uniform, posed against a bright-yellow backdrop, was among the photos.
Zelenskiy and other top government officials visited the site to pay tribute to the dead, as did Kyiv-based foreign diplomats.
Russia has targeted Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks in the days since a May 9th-11th ceasefire that US president Donald Trump said he asked Zelenskiy and Russian president Vladimir Putin to observe. Fighting continued over those 72 hours, although reportedly on a lesser scale.
This week’s attacks run counter to recent suggestions from Trump and Putin that the war is close to ending.
The assault mostly targeted the Ukrainian capital, where 48 people were wounded, including two children, Zelenskiy said.
He said Moscow had launched more than 1,560 drones against Ukrainian population centres since Wednesday, adding that about 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings.
Previously, the biggest Russian drone attack was on March 23rd-24th, when Moscow’s forces fired nearly 1,000 drones and missiles at Ukraine.
Thursday’s death toll in Kyiv approached one from July 2024, when 32 civilians were killed and another 85 injured.
Ukraine has also built up significant long-range capabilities, and Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its air defences shot down 355 Ukrainian drones overnight in one of the largest barrages of the war. Several airports suspended flights overnight because of the attacks.
A Ukrainian drone struck Ryazan, a city about 100km southeast of Moscow, and killed four people, including a child, regional governor Pavel Malkov said.
Plumes of black smoke rose from a fire at an oil refinery. Ukraine has targeted Russian oil facilities to try to deny vital revenue for Moscow and disconcert the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment on the Ryazan strike.
The cruise missile that hit the Kyiv apartment building was built in the second quarter of this year, Zelenskiy said, apparently after Ukrainian experts analysed the wreckage.
“This means Russia is still importing the components, resources and equipment necessary for missile production in circumvention of global sanctions,” he said in another post on X late on Thursday.
“Stopping Russia’s sanctions evasion schemes must be a genuine priority for all our partners.”
Also on Friday, Russia and Ukraine swapped 205 prisoners of war.
Zelenskiy said it was the first phase of a planned swap of 1,000 prisoners from each side.
Some of the Ukrainians have been held by Russia since 2022 and fought in some of the war’s fiercest battles, he said.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the exchange and thanked the United Arab Emirates for helping to broker it. – AP
