KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday urged his allies to bring about “regime change” in Russia, hours after a Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv killed 11 people including a six-year-old boy.
The overnight strikes reduced part of a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv’s western suburbs to rubble and wounded more than a hundred in the capital, according to authorities.
The Russian army meanwhile claimed to have captured Chasiv Yar, a strategically important hillside town in eastern Ukraine where the two sides have been fiercely fighting for months.
Moscow has stepped up its deadly aerial assaults on Ukraine in recent months, resisting US pressure to end its nearly three-and-a-half year invasion as its forces grind forward on the battlefield.
Speaking virtually to a conference marking 50 years since the signing of the Cold War-era Helsinki Accords, Zelenskyy said he believed Russia could be “pushed” to stop the war.
“But if the world doesn’t aim to change the regime in Russia, that means even after the war ends, Moscow will still try to destabilise neighbouring countries,” the Ukrainian leader added.
Between late Wednesday and early Thursday, Russia fired over 300 drones and eight cruise missiles at Ukraine, the main target of which was Kyiv, the Ukrainian air force said.
One missile tore through a nine-storey residential building in western Kyiv, tearing off its facade, authorities said.
AFP journalists at the scene of the strike saw rescuers scouring through a smouldering mound of broken concrete, the belongings of residents scattered among the debris.
“It’s a shock. I still can’t get my bearings. It’s very frightening,” Valentyna Chestopal, a 28-year-old resident of Kyiv, told AFP.
Tymofii was woken up by the sound of a missile, “everything started falling on me. It was terrifying,” said the resident of the Solomyansky district, whose apartment was destroyed and described the experience as “a nightmare.”
Among the victims was a six-year-old boy, who died on the way to hospital in an ambulance, the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said in a post on Telegram.
The Russian army said it had hit Ukraine’s military airfield, ammunition warehouse and drone production facilities with a combined overnight strike using high-precision weaponry and drones.
The attack came just days after US President Donald Trump issued a 10-day ultimatum for Moscow to halt its invasion, now in its fourth year, or face sanctions.
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