Russia targets Kyiv with missiles and drones ahead of Ukraine-US meeting

Samya Kullab and Vasilisa Stepanenko, Associated Press

Russia has attacked Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing one person and wounding 27 others a day before key talks between Ukraine and the US.

Explosions boomed across the Ukrainian capital for hours early on Saturday as ballistic missiles and drones hit the city, continuing as day broke.

The attack came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares to meet US President Donald Trump on Sunday for further talks in an effort to end the nearly four-year-old war. Mr Zelensky has said they plan to discuss issues including security guarantees and territorial matters in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

In a post on Telegram, Mr Zelensky said Russia targeted Ukraine with almost 500 drones and 40 missiles of various types in the latest attack.

The main target was energy and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, he said. In some districts of the region there is no electricity or heating because of the attacks, he added.

“There have been many questions these days,” Mr Zelensky wrote. “Where is the Russian response to the proposals to end the war, which were made by the United States and the world?

“Russian representatives hold long talks, in reality the ‘Kinzal’ and ‘Shaheds’ (drones) speak for them.”

At least 10 residential buildings were damaged in the attack, said interior minister Ihor Klymenko, and people are being evacuated from under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Two children were among those injured in the attack, which local officials said affected seven locations across the city of Kyiv.

The Russian defence ministry said it carried out a “massive strike” overnight, using “long-range precision-guided weapons from land, air, and sea”, and drones, on energy infrastructure facilities “used by the Ukrainian armed forces”, as well as “Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises”.

The ministry said the strike came in response to Ukraine’s attacks on “civilian objects” in Russia.

Earlier on Saturday, the ministry said its air defences shot down seven Ukrainian drones over the Russian regions of Krasnodar and Adygeya overnight.

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’s 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.

It came hours after Mr Zelensky said he will meet Mr Trump in Florida over the weekend.

He told journalists the 20-point plan under discussion “is about 90% ready”.

An “economic agreement” will also be discussed, he said, but he was unable to confirm “whether anything will be finalised by the end”.

The Ukrainian side will also raise “territorial issues”, he said.

Mr Zelensky said Ukraine “would like the Europeans to be involved”, but doubted whether it would be possible at short notice.

“We must, without doubt, find some format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the US are present, but Europe is represented as well,” he said.

The announced meeting is the latest development in an extensive US-led diplomatic push to end the war, but efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.