A fatal Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv early on Wednesday shows that the Kremlin is not interested in pursuing peace in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
AFP journalists in the capital heard a volley of explosions ring out over the city and saw the body of one person killed covered in a black plastic sheet on a street littered with debris.
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Zelensky announced that one person was killed and at least four others were wounded -- including a child -- in the attack that he said had damaged apartment blocks, office buildings, and civilian infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not preparing for peace -- he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities,” Zelensky wrote on social media after the attack.
“Only strong steps and pressure on Russia can stop this terror. Right now we need the unity and the support of all our partners in the fight for a just end to this war,” he added.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out a “group missile strike” on Ukrainian military-industrial sites that produce drones.
“All planned targets were hit,” it said in a statement on social media.
Zelensky’s latest comments on Russia come on the back of mounting rhetoric from Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv over the possibility of negotiations that could end the nearly three-year Russian invasion.
Zelensky is due to meet with US Vice President JD Vance on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, which will be dominated by the war that has cost tens of thousands of lives and.
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- Flurry of meetings -
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, is also due to visit Ukraine next week, after the Zelensky-Vance meeting in Munich.
That trip would come just days before the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion on February 24.
Trump took office vowing to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by leveraging billions of dollars in US assistance sent under former president Joe Biden, to force Kyiv into territorial concessions.
On Tuesday, Trump welcomed to the White House Marc Fogel, an American jailed in Russia since 2021 on drug charges who was released by Moscow and returned to the United States, after US envoy Steve Witkoff secured his release.
The US president said Russia had acted “very nicely” with Fogel’s release and that he hoped it would be the “beginning of a relationship where we can end that war.”
- Strikes continue -
On the ground in Kyiv on Wednesday, emergency services said that some 120 rescue workers had been deployed to three districts of the capital in the aftermath of the attack and that fires sparked by the barrage had been extinguished.
North of Kyiv in the Chernigiv region, governor Vyacheslav Chaus said Russian forces had targeted “critical infrastructure” in the barrage and that two people were wounded there.
The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down six missiles and 71 out of 123 drones, including Iranian-designed Shahed attack vehicles.
The mounting discussions on a possible end to the conflict come at a difficult time for Ukraine on the battlefield, where Kyiv’s army has been losing ground to better-resourced Russian forces at strategic points along the sprawling front line.
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