By Valentyn Ogirenko, Gleb Garanich and Jekaterina Golubkova
KYIV, July 2 (Reuters) – Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight killing at least eight people and injuring over three dozen, as drones and missiles struck residential buildings and started a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier warned of a possible overnight attack and said he was cutting short his visit to Dublin for the start of Ireland’s six-month term in the rotating presidency of the EU.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said eight people had been killed, with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks. He did not elaborate.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said separately 34 more were injured, adding that among the damages, the first to sixth floors of an apartment building collapsed after a direct hit.
Reuters video footage showed emergency services working through the rubble of that used to be a nine-storey building as the sun started to rise over Kyiv.
In an earlier post, Klitschko said the injured included paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station, and that some people were still trapped inside damaged residential buildings.
Pictures posted online showed a fire burning out of control at the top of a building on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while elsewhere in the city, windows blew out and cars were destroyed. Multiple explosions were heard in Kyiv, a Reuters witness said.
Carrying children, belongings, tents and pets, people crowded into underground stations, as air raid alerts were issued for most of Ukraine’s territory on Thursday in Russia’s worst attack on the country since mid-June.
“Another horrific night for the residents of the city, who were forced to spend it in shelters,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, said in a post on X.
Neighbouring Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets on Thursday as a preventive measure before calling those back and saying no airspace violation was recorded.
EXCHANGING ATTACKS
Zelenskiy has proposed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the more than four-year-old war that the Kremlin leader has rejected.
Ukraine has recently intensified strikes deeper into the Russian territory, triggering a widespread fuel crisis in the world’s third-biggest oil producer and forcing it to import gasoline from as far away as India.
Governor Alexander Drozdenko of Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region, Putin’s home and where large export and oil refining facilities are located, said on Telegram that Russian forces brought down seven drones on Thursday.
Neighbouring Finland, a NATO and European Union member like Poland, briefly issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland before lifting it later, its defence forces said on X.
In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, a man was killed and his wife injured after a drone hit their home, local authorities said separately on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify details of the casualties. Russia and Ukraine say they do not deliberately target civilians.
(Reporting by Valentyn Ogirenko, Gleb Garanich and Alina SmutkoWriting by Jekaterīna Golubkova and Ron Popeski; Editing by Franklin Paul, Bill Berkrot and Kate Mayberry)
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