Russia launched more than 800 drones and missiles at Ukrainian targets overnight, with at least one strike damaging the government’s main building in Kyiv.
“For the first time, the government building, roof and upper floors were damaged due to an enemy attack,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. Pictures shared on the internet show a fire on the top floor, which Svyrydenko said was being extinguished by rescuers.
Hitting the main government building is a “serious escalation,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.
In total, more than 800 drones and 13 missiles were fired at buildings in Kyiv, Odesa, Kremenchuk, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said. Several people were reported killed across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X.
Twenty-six of Ukraine’s allies pledged to provide security guarantees for postwar Ukraine in a meeting in Paris on Thursday, serving as a nudge to U.S. President Donald Trump to step up as well.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that deploying foreign troops in Ukraine would trigger a Russian military response and said that in the event of a peace deal, “there is no point in the presence of foreign troops on the territory of Ukraine.”
Svyrydenko urged Ukraine’s allies to “increase the sanction pressure” on Russia, to “hit the Kremlin’s military machine.”
A European Union delegation is travelling to Washington “to ready new joint sanctions against Russia,” European Council President António Costa said on Friday, indicating Brussels is looking to Washington to pile further pressure on Moscow.
Trump last month made a renewed sanctions threat against Russia in case there was no progress toward a peace deal.
The European Union is preparing a new package of sanctions, the 19th since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said they would “come forward soon” with that package.
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