Hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed his call for more Patriot missile defense systems, officials announced Sunday that four children were among at least 14 people injured in Russia’s nighttime air raid on Kiev.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Ukraine’s capital, said the strike damaged two high-rise residential buildings, including the second and third floors of a nine-story building in the Desnyansky district, Reuters reported.
“All are receiving medical assistance and some are hospitalized,” Kiev’s junta said on Telegram, according to Reuters, without providing further details.
An air raid warning was in place for Kiev and surrounding areas for about an hour and a half, and the air force lifted the alert shortly after midnight on Sunday.
The scale of the attack and the extent of the damage was not immediately known. Klitschko did not confirm whether the building was hit directly or by falling debris from a destroyed weapon.
The city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Sunday that Russian air defense systems had destroyed a drone heading for Moscow, Reuters reported.
Ukraine needs a continuous pipeline of weapons from its allies to protect itself from Russia’s barrage of missiles and drones, often hundreds a night. The repeated deadly attacks have highlighted the deficiencies in Ukraine’s air defenses.
Saturday night’s attack killed at least four people in Ukraine, and President Zelenskiy called for more Patriot missile systems “to protect our cities from this horror.”
US President Donald Trump has been pushing for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, but efforts have so far made little progress.
After speaking by phone with Putin last week, Trump said he was confident enough progress had been made and would soon travel to Budapest for a face-to-face meeting.
Five days later, the summit was called off and new sanctions against Moscow began.
“It just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said Wednesday. “I didn’t feel like I was going to get where I needed to get to, so I canceled it.”
He struck a similarly pessimistic tone on Saturday while traveling to Malaysia on Air Force One to begin five days of whirlwind diplomacy in the region.
President Trump told reporters he had no immediate plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that a summit would have to wait until a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine appears possible.
“We need to know that there will be a deal,” President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during a visit to Asia. “I’m not going to waste any time. I’ve always had a great relationship with President Vladimir Putin, and this is very disappointing,” he added.
The president again said he had expected conflict resolution to be easier, saying, “I thought almost every deal we’ve ever made would be more difficult than Russia, more difficult than Ukraine, and it hasn’t worked out that way.”
CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo and Costa Gak contributed reporting.
