Sunday, September 7, 2025 - Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early Sunday, killing two people and setting the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv ablaze in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky warned would prolong the war.
An AFP reporter saw the roof of Ukraine’s cabinet of
ministers in flames and smoke billowing over the capital.
Drone strikes also damaged several high-rise buildings in
Kyiv, according to emergency services.
Russia has shown no sign of halting its
three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, pushing hardline demands for ending
the war despite efforts by the United States to broker a peace deal.
Residents in Kyiv spoke of their frustration following the
strikes.
“This is already routine for us, unfortunately,” Olga, a
30-year-old resident of a damaged building, told AFP.
The Russians first “grab the Shaheds (Iranian-designed
drones), then the rockets come,” she said.
The attack on Sunday was the first to hit Ukraine’s cabinet
of ministers, a sprawling government complex at the heart of Kyiv.
An AFP reporter saw helicopters dropping what appeared to be
buckets of water over its roof, as emergency services rushed to the scene.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians in Ukraine, said it
had struck “Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and transport infrastructure”
in the attack, without mentioning the government building.
Police cordoned off the area surrounding the building, the
roof and upper floors of which sustained damage.
“We will restore the buildings. But we cannot bring back
lost lives. The enemy terrorises and kills our people every day throughout the
country,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Russia fired at least 810 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine
between late Saturday and early Sunday, in a new record, according to the
Ukrainian air force.
Zelensky said emergency services were working across the
country.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already
begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” he said
on Facebook.
The attack drew condemnation from European leaders,
including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen
“Once again, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy,” von der
Leyen wrote on X.
Strike kills six
AFP reporters heard explosions over the capital early
Sunday.
A strike on a nine-story residential building in the west of
Kyiv killed at least two people, a mother and her two-month-old son,
prosecutors said.
More than a dozen others were wounded in Kyiv, according to
the emergency service.
Among them was a 24-year-old pregnant woman, who delivered a
premature baby shortly after the attack, and doctors were fighting for her life
and that of her baby, state TV Suspilne reported.
Four more died, and dozens of others were wounded in
overnight strikes across the country’s east and southeast, authorities said.
The attack also killed seven horses at an equestrian club in
Kyiv’s suburbs, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry.
“The world cannot stand aside while a terrorist state takes
lives—human or animal—every single day,” it wrote on X.
The barrage came after more than two dozen European
countries pledged to patrol any agreement to end the war, some of whom said
they were willing to deploy troops on the ground.
Kyiv insists on Western-backed security guarantees to
prevent future Russian attacks, but President Vladimir Putin warns that any
Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
Efforts in recent weeks by US President Donald Trump to end
the war have so far yielded little progress.
Meantime, on the front line in the east, Moscow continued to
claim territory in costly grinding battles, capturing another village in the
Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia occupies around 20 per cent of the country in
total.
Tens of thousands have been killed in three-and-a-half years
of fighting, which has forced millions from their homes and destroyed much of
eastern and southern Ukraine in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
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