Russia’s fiercest strikes in months hit Kyiv as peace hopes reel
KYIV — Russia unleashed one of the largest aerial assaults of the war on the Ukrainian capital before dawn Thursday, blasting residential areas, a train and offices tied to European institutions, killing at least 23 people and injuring scores more, Ukrainian officials said. The hours-long barrage, echoing across every district of the city, came less than two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska for a summit pitched as a step toward peace.
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The strikes — a mix of missiles and drones — left apartment blocks with their windows blown out, a Ukrainian Railways intercity train scarred by shrapnel, and smoke columns rising into the humid August air. “Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X, calling the assault the second-largest since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
With rescue crews still pulling survivors from rubble late into the night, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko called it one of the heaviest attacks on the capital in recent months. “The whole city felt it,” he said. Officials reported at least 63 wounded in Kyiv alone, and power cuts after energy sites were hit.
What we know
- At least 23 people were killed in Kyiv, according to the city’s military administration. The toll could rise as searches continue.
- Strikes damaged a Ukrainian Railways passenger train, buildings near European Union and British mission offices, a Turkish-owned enterprise and the Azerbaijan embassy, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of casualties at diplomatic or EU-linked sites.
- Across Ukraine, the military said Russia struck 13 locations overnight, targeting energy infrastructure and air bases. National grid operator Ukrenergo confirmed power disruptions.
- Ukraine’s air defenses said they downed 26 of 31 missiles and 563 of nearly 600 drones launched nationwide. Russia’s Defense Ministry countered that it shot down 102 Ukrainian drones across at least seven Russian regions.
- Ukraine’s long-range drone units said they hit the Afipsky and Kuybyshevskyi oil refineries inside Russia — part of a months-long campaign to degrade Moscow’s fuel supply.
Diplomacy buffeted as the bombs fall
Thursday’s violence landed squarely in the middle of a halting diplomatic push. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy on Ukraine, wrote on X that the targets “were not soldiers and weapons but residential areas in Kyiv — blasting civilian trains, the EU & British mission council offices, and innocent civilians,” arguing the attack undermines the White House’s efforts to broker a deal.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Trump “was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised,” adding a candid coda: “Perhaps both sides of this war are not ready to end it themselves.” The comment underscored an uncomfortable truth: battlefield momentum, domestic politics in Kyiv and Moscow, and the incentives of two hardened militaries often conspire against cease-fires, even when foreign leaders press for them.
Russia insisted it struck “military-industrial facilities and air bases,” and said it remains interested in talks. But Ukrainian officials cast the barrage as a deliberate message from the Kremlin after the Alaska summit and Trump’s subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy. “It chooses to continue killing instead of ending the war,” the Ukrainian leader wrote.
Europe pushes back with warnings — and more sanctions
Outrage ricocheted through European capitals. The European Union and Britain summoned Russian envoys to protest. “This is another grim reminder of what is at stake,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Brussels. “It shows that the Kremlin will stop at nothing to terrorize Ukraine, blindly killing civilians and even targeting the European Union.” She said two missiles detonated near the EU office 20 seconds apart, and signaled a 19th package of sanctions was in the works alongside plans to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the British Council building was damaged in the strikes. “Putin is killing children and civilians and sabotaging hopes of peace,” he wrote on X.
Kyiv’s long night
By sunrise, electrical crews were stringing temporary lines and covering blown-out windows with plywood; medics triaged the wounded under stairwells as air-raid sirens cycled repeatedly. In a city accustomed to sudden bursts of danger, Thursday was different: blasts rolled for hours, sirens bled into the drone buzz, and families huddled deep in metro stations — some scrolling phones for scraps of good news, others clutching paper bags with documents and medicine.
The decision to target the city’s lifelines carried familiar hallmarks. Since the first winter of the war, Moscow has sought to grind down Ukrainian morale by striking utilities, public transit and places where ordinary life gathers — hospitals, shops, schools, cultural institutions. Kyiv survived those months with a stubborn ritual: tea poured on train platforms, hot soup at bomb shelters, neighbors with thermoses on shadowed stairwells. Those rituals returned Thursday.
Drones, distance and the drift of modern war
The night also underscored how the conflict is reshaping warfare far beyond Ukraine. Swarming drones — cheap, plentiful and increasingly precise — are now a daily fact of life from Kharkiv’s high-rises to oil hubs on Russia’s Black Sea rim. They have shredded old assumptions about safe rear areas, and spread the war’s footprint across hundreds of miles.
Ukraine’s growing drone fleet has struck deep into Russia’s energy network for months, aiming to sap revenue and fuel stocks that power the invasion. Moscow’s response — stepped-up strikes far from the front — seeks in part to push Kyiv toward concessions. If the strategy sounds familiar, it is: from London in 1940 to Aleppo in 2016, air wars have often tried to pry open political outcomes by battering cities. The record suggests that such campaigns harden resolve as often as they soften it.
What comes next?
In Kyiv, officials promised more interceptors and better shelter access. In Brussels, fresh sanctions and legal work on frozen assets are moving ahead. In Ankara, Zelenskyy said he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would outline new security guarantees for Ukraine “on paper” next week. And in Washington, Leavitt said President Trump would speak further about the path forward.
But Thursday’s attack sharpened an uncomfortable question for all parties: if both sides are emotionally and strategically invested in fighting on, what combination of pressure, incentives and guarantees could make negotiations credible? Kyiv insists any settlement must secure its cities and sovereignty; Moscow continues to press offensives in the east and to demand recognition of territory it seized. Between those poles lies a trench line of hard reality, now etched into Ukraine’s map and its memory.
As search crews wrapped thermal blankets around the rescued and daylight exposed the pockmarked facades, one fact remained inescapable: diplomacy is struggling to keep pace with the war’s expanding range. Until it does, the thrum of drones and the flash of incoming missiles will continue to set the tempo — for Kyiv, for Moscow, and for the leaders trying, and so far failing, to bend this war toward silence.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
