Russian ballistic missiles kill at least five in Ukraine's Kyiv, spark fires

KYIV: Russian ballistic missiles killed at least five people and injured over two dozen more in Kyiv early on Thursday, authorities said on the Telegram messaging app, damaging buildings and leaving parts of the Ukrainian capital without power.

People were trapped in one residential building and fires broke out in multiple locations, while non-residential facilities, warehouses and a children’s hospital were also hit, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

A Reuters witness reported hearing more than a dozen explosions.

In the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital, another person was killed, an official said separately on Telegram.

Ukraine’s emergency service showed video of servicemen battling a blaze in a building and helping people to escape facilities destroyed during the night in Kyiv.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged attacks almost daily since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and diplomatic efforts involving the United States and Europe have so far failed to bring a lasting ceasefire.

Poland, a NATO and European Union member bordering Ukraine, has started defensive air operations to protect its airspace, its military said in a post on X.

Ukraine had handed proposals to US negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for a plan to end the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said this month, and he has also repeatedly asked for interceptor missiles to ward off missile attacks.

Russia did not receive specific proposals for possible new meetings with US negotiators, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, told the Izvestia newspaper, but said Moscow would be ready to arrange a meeting at short notice.

Witkoff and Kushner were last in Moscow last January and have not yet visited Kyiv.