KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia attacked Ukraine\u2019s capital with missiles and drones early Saturday morning, killing one person and wounding at least 27, a day before talks between Ukraine and the U.S., authorities said. <\/p>\n
Explosions boomed across Kyiv for hours as ballistic missiles and drones hit the city. The attack began in the early morning hours Saturday and was continuing as day broke. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepared to meet with President Trump in Florida on Sunday for talks on ending the nearly four-year war. Zelensky told reporters he was on a plane en route to Florida on Saturday afternoon and would stop in Canada to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney. <\/p>\n
Zelensky said he and Trump planned to discuss issues including security guarantees and territorial issues in Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. <\/p>\n
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that it carried out a \u201cmassive strike\u201d overnight, using \u201clong-range precision-guided weapons from land, air and sea, including Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles\u201d and drones. It said it targeted energy infrastructure facilities used by Ukraine\u2019s forces and military-industrial enterprises.<\/p>\n
The ministry said the strike came in response to Ukraine\u2019s attacks on \u201ccivilian objects\u201d in Russia.<\/p>\n
Earlier Saturday, the ministry said its air defenses shot down seven Ukrainian drones over the Russian regions of Krasnodar and Adygeya overnight.<\/p>\n
Poland scrambled fighter jets and closed airports in Lublin and Rzeszow near the border with Ukraine for several hours during the Russian attacks, the country\u2019s armed forces command said on X. There was no violation of Polish airspace, it said. Civil aviation authority Pansa said the two airports had since resumed operations. It was unclear what caused the alert in Poland when the Russian attacks were focused on Kyiv, which is far from the border.<\/p>\n
Russia targeted Ukraine with 519 drones and 40 missiles, Ukraine\u2019s air force said. The main target was energy and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, Zelensky said. In some districts of the region there is no electricity or heating because of the attacks, he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday Russia demonstrated how it responds to peace talks between Ukraine and the United States on ending Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine. They carried out massive attacks on Ukraine precisely as we move toward peace negotiations,\u201d said Zelensky, speaking to reporters via audio note while traveling. \u201cThat is Russia\u2019s response.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018His scream is still in my ears\u2019<\/p>\n
More than 10 residential buildings were damaged, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post on Telegram. People were being evacuated from under the rubble of collapsed buildings. <\/p>\n
Olena Karpenko, 52, heard a man as he burned to death in the attack. \u201cHis scream is still in my ears. I can\u2019t believe it,\u201d she said, weeping. <\/p>\n
Karpenko said she heard a sudden explosion at the nearby thermal power plant, followed by a stronger blast that shook the windows of her home. Then came the hit on her building. <\/p>\n
\u201cI saw how the apartment was burning. There was a fire and we heard a man\u2019s screams, begging for help,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Two children were among those wounded in the attack, which hit seven locations across the capital, said the head of the Kyiv Military Administration, Tymur Tkachenko, in a statement on Telegram. A body was found under the rubble of one damaged building, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, the entire center of Kyiv was under attack by drones,\u201d he said, adding that Russia was sending a message that \u201cit is raising the stakes in this war.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fire broke out in an 18-story residential building in the Dnipro district of the city, and emergency crews rushed to the scene to contain the flames. A 24-story residential building in the Darnytsia district was also hit, Tkachenko said, and more fires broke out in the Obolonskyi and Holosiivsky districts. <\/p>\n
In the wider Kyiv region, the strikes hit industrial and residential buildings, according to Ukraine\u2019s Emergency Service. In the Vyshhorod area, emergency crews rescued one person found under the rubble of a destroyed house. <\/p>\n
Zelensky heads to Florida<\/p>\n
Zelensky told reporters he would aim to ensure there were \u201cas few unresolved issues as possible\u201d in talks with Trump while respecting Ukraine\u2019s red lines. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am confident there are compromise proposals \u2014 we know the Americans \u2014 and, obviously, our enemy also always has its own goals, which we know well,\u201d he said, speaking via audio note in a WhatsApp chat with journalists.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said he would prioritize discussing security guarantees for Ukraine. The U.S. has committed to providing guarantees that mirror the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u2019s Article 5, which means an attack on Ukraine would trigger a collective military response from the U.S. and its allies. But key details need to be worked out. <\/p>\n
Territorial concessions are the most sensitive of issues the two leaders will discuss, including the Donetsk region and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine would never recognize any territory as Russian \u201cunder any circumstances.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut the most important issue I want to stress today is security guarantees. Beyond territorial issues and the ZNPP [nuclear plant], security guarantees are critically important for us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Zelensky also will speak to European leaders online to brief them on the discussions. <\/p>\n
Kullab and Stepanenko write for the Associated Press. AP writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia attacked Ukraine\u2019s capital with missiles and drones early Saturday morning, killing one person and wounding at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[11413,31239,201240,60436,10546,7466,1551,99540,116045,332,75608,201239,10849,657,21151],"class_list":{"0":"post-658221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-attack","9":"tag-drone","10":"tag-four-year-war","11":"tag-issue","12":"tag-kyiv","13":"tag-missile","14":"tag-president-trump","15":"tag-reporter","16":"tag-residential-building","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-saturday-afternoon","19":"tag-security-guarantee","20":"tag-talk","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-zelensky"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115792808944778687","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}