By Frank Jack Daniel
KYIV (Reuters) -Hundreds of Russian drones and more than a dozen missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital early on Thursday, killing two people in a second massive air strike on Ukraine in two days as Kyiv seeks critical aid from its partners at a meeting in Rome.
Nineteen people were wounded and damage reported in nearly every district of Kyiv in the attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the assault had involved around 400 drones and 18 missiles, primarily targeting the capital.
Explosions and anti-aircraft machine gun fire rattled the city. Windows were blown out, facades ravaged and cars burned to shells, including in the city centre where an apartment in an eight-storey building was engulfed in flames.
“This is terror because it happens every night when people are asleep,” said Karyna Volf, a 25-year-old Kyiv resident who rushed out of her apartment moments before shards of glass showered her home.
Ukrainian air defences stopped all but a few dozen of the drones, authorities said.
Escalating Russian strikes in recent weeks have strained Ukrainian air defences at a perilous moment in the war, now in its fourth year, and forced residents in Kyiv and elsewhere across the country to seek cover in bomb shelters overnight.
Thursday’s attack came a day after Russia launched a record 728 drones at Ukraine.
“Residential buildings, vehicles, warehouse facilities, offices and non-residential buildings are on fire,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had hit “military-industrial” targets in Kyiv as well as military airfields.
ROME CONFERENCE
Zelenskiy and other top Ukrainian officials were in Rome on Thursday for a recovery conference to lobby Kyiv’s allies for more critical defensive weapons and investment in Ukraine’s war-hit economy.
Zelenskiy urged European allies to “much more actively” use Russian assets frozen during the war for Ukrainian reconstruction.
After U.S. President Donald Trump pledged earlier this week to send more defensive weapons to Kyiv, Washington resumed deliveries of artillery shells and mobile rocket artillery missiles to Ukraine, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Ukraine is also seeking more Patriot air-defence systems that have proven critical to defending against fast-moving Russian ballistic missiles.
Zelenskiy, who said he had a “substantive” talk with U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg on Wednesday, will also meet American officials to discuss potential new U.S. sanctions on Russia, Ukraine’s foreign minister said.
Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated with President Vladimir Putin, saying that the Russian leader was throwing a lot of “bullshit” at the U.S. efforts to end the war that Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, the U.S. State Department and Russia’s foreign ministry said.
(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly, Yurii Kovalenko and Anastasiia Malenko; Writing by Dan PeleschukEditing by Philippa Fletcher and Gareth Jones)
