Waves of Russian drones and missiles in and around Kyiv overnight killed eight people, lit up the night sky with fires in residential areas and damaged the entrance to a metro station bomb shelter, Ukrainian officials said on Monday.
Rescue workers pulled bodies from the rubble of an apartment block in Kyiv’s busy Shevchenkivskyi district, less than a kilometre from the U.S. embassy.Â
Valeriy Mankuta, 33, described clambering from his window to the third floor below to escape after his building was hit by what authorities said was a missile. Reuters photos showed several explosions above apartment buildings in the area.
“There were bricks on me, there was something in my mouth. It was total hell. I woke up in the rubble,” said Mankuta, a construction worker.
At least 34 people, including four children, were wounded in the attacks on Kyiv, the emergencies service said.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed 339 of 352 drones and 15 of 16 missiles launched by Russia in the attack on four Ukrainian regions.
Moscow has stepped up drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in recent weeks as talks to end the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, yielded few results.
The strikes come a day before NATO’s annual summit is held in The Hague and as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Britain to discuss defence.Â
Zelenskyy will meet on Monday with King Charles, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the speakers of both houses of Parliament, his presidential spokesperson said.
He added that the president would talk to Ukrainian military personnel who are being trained in Britain and representatives of think-tanks.
“The main purpose of the visit is to deepen defence co-operation,” the spokesperson said.Â
Most sections of Kyiv suffer damage
In Kyiv, firefighters battled a blaze at the swimming pool of the National Technical University, Reuters photos showed. The large campus has a department working on aerospace technology. Several academic buildings and four dormitories were also hit, the polytechnic said.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said people could still be under the rubble of buildings after the overnight attacks caused damage in six of the city’s 10 districts.
Canada pledged $4.3 billion in support for Ukraine and added sanctions to Russia, as the G7 summit wrapped in Alberta. Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the summit’s final day.
An entrance to the metro station in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district was also damaged, officials said.
Kyiv’s deep metro stations have been used throughout the war as some of the city’s safest bomb shelters.
In the broader Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, a 68-year-old woman was killed and at least eight people were injured, officials said.
Russia launched one of its deadliest attacks on Kyiv last week, when hundreds of drones killed 28 people and injured more than 150.
