Crystal Dike
At least six people, including two children, have been killed in a series of intense Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.
Another 21 people were reported wounded in the overnight assaults, which Zelensky said underscored that Moscow had not faced enough pressure to end its war.
The attacks came just hours after US President Donald Trump announced that his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest had been shelved. Trump said on Tuesday that he did not want a “wasted meeting.”
The Kremlin has since rejected renewed calls from Trump and European leaders for a ceasefire along the current front lines.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said it had launched a strike late Tuesday on a Russian chemical plant in the Bryansk border region using UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Officials described the operation as “a successful hit,” saying the plant produced gunpowder, explosives, and rocket fuel components used in Russian munitions.
Zelensky, who was due to visit Swedish defence contractor Saab on Wednesday, returned last Friday from talks with Trump in Washington, where he failed to secure long-range Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine.
“As soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further away for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, came under a heavy wave of attacks overnight — the first since September 28. A couple in their 60s were killed when a drone hit their high-rise building in the city, while four more people died in the wider Kyiv region, including a woman, a six-month-old baby, and a 12-year-old girl.
Ballistic missile warnings remained in place through most of the night, as explosions echoed across the capital and fires broke out in residential areas.
Across Ukraine, Russian strikes once again targeted energy infrastructure, forcing emergency power outages in several regions.