


Russia pummeled Kyiv with drones and missiles overnight Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, including an American, and wounding more than 100, according to local authorities, in the deadliest attack on the Ukrainian capital in almost a year.
It was the latest in a series of Russian air assaults that have intensified in recent weeks, dimming already fragile hopes for a ceasefire and coming as world leaders were convening for a Group of 7 summit in Canada that few believe will help bring an end to the war.
“Putin is doing this solely because he can afford to keep waging war. He wants the war to go on,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in a statement from the summit, referring to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The Ukrainian leader planned to press Ukraine’s allies for more support and tougher sanctions on Russia at the gathering and meet with President Donald Trump on Tuesday. But Trump renewed his embrace of Putin at the meeting Monday, criticizing the decision to expel Russia from the bloc after Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Trump abruptly left Canada on Monday night
Zelenskyy slammed what he described as the world’s failure to deliver a strong rebuke to Russia’s assaults. “It’s a disgrace when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” he said.
The Ukrainian air force said the latest attack had involved 440 drones and decoys alongside 32 missiles, targeting cities across the south and west as well, including the port city of Odesa, where two residents died. The air force said it had intercepted most of the drones and roughly three-quarters of the missiles, although those figures could not be independently verified.
Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, first reported 14 deaths in Kyiv but later revised the number to 10, explaining that some body parts initially believed to be from multiple victims were later determined to belong to the same person.
Klymenko also, told reporters that a 62-year-old U.S. citizen had died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds. Mayor Vitali Klitschko had said earlier that an American had been found dead in a house near a strike site.
In Kyiv, air raid sirens lasted for nearly 10 hours, with residents enduring an all-too-familiar soundtrack of the buzz of attack drones flying over neighborhoods, the staccato of heavy machine guns trying to shoot them down, and the thud of air defense missiles trying to intercept Russian missiles.
As dawn broke, thick plumes of black smoke rose over the capital, and the acrid smell of burning hung heavy in the air. Damage was reported at more than two dozen sites across Kyiv, including a nine-story residential building outside the city center that was hollowed out by a missile strike.
On Tuesday morning, rescuers were clearing rubble from the building, which now stood with a gaping hole in one of its end sections. Amid the mangled concrete and twisted metal lay remnants of ordinary lives shattered in a split second by the strike — a pan, a kitchen glove, a half-crushed can of soda.
Using a crane, rescuers pulled a survivor from an apartment that teetered beside the collapsed section of the building. Shards of glass from shattered windows blanketed the ground, crunching under the boots of firefighters and police officers. Local authorities warned that more people might still be trapped under the ruins.
Standing at the foot of the building, his face speckled with blood and scratches, Evgeniy Povarenkov stared into the void. He pointed to a blown-out window beside the gaping hole in the structure.
“My apartment,” he said, still struggling to process how he had survived the attack.
Povarenkov described how the explosion jolted the building at 3:45 a.m. and knocked him unconscious. When he woke up, he saw that his mother had been badly injured. He pulled her from the apartment, and rescuers rushed her to the hospital. He was now waiting to be allowed to return to pick up documents.
“They are killing us, killing the Ukrainian nation,” Povarenkov said of Russia. “And now the United States has refused to help.”
Tuesday’s attack followed the broader pattern seen in recent weeks, with Russia launching hundreds of drones at night in an effort to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, before firing missiles that are more difficult to intercept.
The United Nations said in a statement that the overnight attack was the fourth time this month that Russia had launched more than 400 drones and missiles in a single night. By comparison, Moscow launched about 550 aerial weapons during the entire month of June 2024.