This handout {photograph} taken and launched by Ukrainian State Emergency Service on September 7, 2025, reveals a fireplace on the Ukrainian authorities constructing in Kyiv, following an in a single day assault, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early on September 7, setting the seat of the Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv ablaze, authorities mentioned. (Picture by Handout / Ukrainian State Emergency Service / AFP)
KYIV, Ukraine – Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early Sunday, killing 4 individuals and setting the seat of the Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv ablaze in an assault President Volodymyr Zelensky warned would lengthen the struggle.
The Sunday assault was the primary to hit Ukraine’s cupboard of ministers, a sprawling authorities advanced on the coronary heart of Kyiv.
An AFP reporter noticed the roof of the constructing in flames and smoke billowing over the capital.
Drone strikes additionally broken a number of high-rise buildings in Kyiv, in response to emergency companies.
Russia has proven no signal of halting its three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, pushing hardline calls for for ending the struggle regardless of efforts by the USA to dealer a peace deal.
Residents in Kyiv spoke of their frustration following the strikes.
“That is already routine for us, sadly,” Olga, a 30-year-old resident of a broken constructing informed AFP.
The Russians first “seize the Shaheds (Iranian-designed drones), then the rockets come,” she mentioned.
An AFP reporter noticed helicopters dropping buckets of water over the federal government constructing’s roof, as emergency companies rushed to the scene.
European condemnation
Russia, which denies focusing on civilians in Ukraine, mentioned it had struck a plant and a logistics hub in Kyiv.
Its defence ministry mentioned “no strikes have been carried out on different targets inside the boundaries of Kyiv”, explicitly denying duty for the federal government constructing strike.
Police cordoned off the world surrounding the constructing, the roof and higher flooring of which sustained harm.
“We are going to restore the buildings. However we can not carry again misplaced lives. The enemy terrorises and kills our individuals every single day all through the nation,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko mentioned.
She later posted a video from contained in the broken flooring displaying shattered workplaces and burned partitions.
Russia fired no less than 810 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, in a brand new report, in response to the Ukrainian air power.
“Such killings now, when actual diplomacy might have already begun way back, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the struggle,” Zelensky mentioned.
He mentioned the assault in a name with French President Emmanuel Macron and mentioned that France would assist Ukraine strengthen its defence.
Macron, on X, condemned the assault and mentioned Russia “is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of struggle and terror”. France stood by Ukraine, he mentioned.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen additionally slammed the assault.
“As soon as once more, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy,” von der Leyen wrote on X.
The “cowardly strikes” present that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not be severe about peace”, Starmer mentioned in an announcement.
Strikes kill 4
AFP reporters heard explosions over the capital early Sunday.
A strike on a nine-story residential constructing within the west of Kyiv killed no less than two individuals, a mom and her two-month-old son, prosecutors mentioned.
Greater than two dozens others have been wounded in Kyiv, in response to the emergency service.
Amongst them was a 24-year-old pregnant girl, who delivered a untimely child shortly after the assault, and docs have been preventing for her life and that of her child, state TV Suspilne reported.
Two extra died and dozens different wounded in in a single day strikes throughout the nation’s east and southeast, authorities mentioned.
The assault additionally killed seven horses at an equestrian membership in Kyiv’s suburbs, in response to Ukraine’s international ministry.
“The world can not stand apart whereas a terrorist state takes lives — human or animal — each single day,” it wrote on X.
The barrage got here after greater than two dozen European nations pledged to patrol any settlement to finish the struggle, a few of whom mentioned they have been prepared to deploy troops on the bottom.
Kyiv insists on Western-backed safety ensures to stop future Russian assaults, however Putin warns that any Western troops in Ukraine can be unacceptable and legit targets.
Efforts in latest weeks by US President Donald Trump to finish the struggle have to date yielded little progress.
Meantime, on the entrance line within the east, Moscow continued to assert territory in pricey grinding battles, capturing one other village within the Dnipropetrovsk area. Russia occupies round 20 % of the nation in complete.
Tens of 1000’s have been killed in three-and-a-half years of preventing, which has pressured hundreds of thousands from their properties and destroyed a lot of jap and southern Ukraine in Europe’s bloodiest battle since World Conflict II.
Your subscription couldn’t be saved. Please attempt once more.
Your subscription has been profitable.
Agence France-Presse
