A government building in Ukraine’s capital was burning on Sunday after a Russian strike breached the heavily defended government district overnight, the latest in a relentless offensive that has continued unabated despite the Trump administration’s efforts to mediate peace talks.
Smoke could be seen early on Sunday billowing from the large, colonnaded building, where the Cabinet of Ministers convenes, in Kyiv, the capital.
The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said falling debris from a drone shot down by air defense systems appeared to have started the fire.
“As a result of a likely shoot-down of a drone, a fire broke out in a government building,” Mr. Klitschko wrote in a post on the Telegram social networking site. “Firefighters are working at the site.”
Rising on a hill and crisscrossed by leafy, cobblestone streets, the Kyiv government district lies at the center of rings of air defenses and is seen as the best protected area in the country. The cabinet building is near Parliament and the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Across Ukraine, drones and missiles hit multiple sites on Sunday, with damage reported in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in south-central Ukraine, and Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea. In Kyiv, explosions set fires in two apartment buildings, killing at least one adult and a child, according to the local authorities.
The strikes came three days after European leaders — including Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France — met in Paris to propose a framework for security guarantees in postwar Ukraine, assuming a cease-fire or peace settlement is reached.
In the latest flurry of diplomacy aimed at stopping the war, President Trump met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a summit in Alaska last month and with Mr. Zelensky and European leaders at the White House soon after. Russia said it would halt its invasion if Ukraine retreated from territory in the country’s Donetsk region, which Russia has tried and failed to seize since it started the war in 2022.
Ukraine proposed an unconditional cease-fire in March, but Russia has demanded concessions on territory, a cap on the size of Ukraine’s postwar army and a ban on treaties prohibiting a future invasion. It has continued a campaign of exploding drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, civilian infrastructure, military sites and other targets, despite the international calls for a pause.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
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