The Russian attack struck Kiev overnight, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed his call for more Patriot missile defense systems, the second deadly attack in less than 24 hours.
Ukraine’s state emergency service confirmed on Sunday that the airstrike killed at least three people and injured dozens, including three children.
“There are already 29 people injured, including six children. The youngest is four years old,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
A fire broke out in a nine-storey residential building in the Desniansky region, and 13 people were rescued from the upper floors.
Emergency services also said a drone crashed into a 16-story high-rise building, shattering windows from the first to ninth floors. Another drone struck a high-rise building in the Oboronsky district, but firefighters said they did not set the scene on fire.
“All are receiving medical assistance and some are hospitalized,” Kiev’s junta said on Telegram.
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, announced on Sunday that Russian air defense systems had destroyed a drone heading for Moscow.
The Kremlin announced on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the command post of the Russian military and met with Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.
“The president received a detailed report on the situation at the contact line,” the Kremlin statement said.
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.
