Vladimir Putin has ignored international outrage over Russia’s strikes on UK and EU buildings and has unleashed a new deadly barrage on Ukraine.
It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls on Western allies to send a ‘strong joint signal’ to the Kremlin.
In one of its deadliest onslaughts since the start of the three and a half year war, Moscow launched ‘egregious’ attacks on civilian targets in Kyiv on Thursday, including the EU delegation and British Council buildings.
The total death toll for the major offensive has risen to 23, including four children. Some 63 others have been injured including 11 minors.
But Putin brushed aside the world’s revulsion and carried on attacking Ukraine overnight – killing civilians in Kherson, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.
The strikes on Thursday, which are understood to have included 629 drones and 31 ballistic and cruise missiles, were widely condemned by the U.S. and European leaders – who accused Moscow of derailing peace talks just two weeks after the Alaska summit.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accused Putin of ‘sabotaging hopes of peace’, while a Foreign Office spokesperson added that the ‘outrageous attacks’ will ‘only harden UK and Western resolve to support Ukraine’.
Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy issued a statement on X condemning the strikes, which he described as the second-largest aerial attack of the war so far.
‘The targets? Not soldiers and weapons but residential areas in Kyiv—blasting civilian trains, the EU & British mission council offices, and innocent civilians,’ he wrote.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Thursday’s onslaught showed ‘a deliberate choice to escalate and mock peace efforts’, and UN secretary-general António Guterres said the ‘attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law’.
But after the horror of strikes in Kyiv a day earlier, Putin’s forces are keeping up their onslaught against border areas as he seeks to grab more territory.
In new attacks, two people were killed and nine wounded in Kherson as the Russian President insists on pushing ahead with his drive to invade more Ukrainian territory.
In Dnipro, two were killed – a man and a woman – and three wounded in night Shahed drone strikes by Russian forces.
Fire raged in the city after the Russian strikes.
Meanwhile in Zaporizhzhia, a one year old child and a man, 70, were injured in Russian strikes.
This region suffered an appalling 553 strikes on 13 settlements as Putin seeks to break the will of Ukrainian residents.
In Kyiv, a large-scale fire was still raging for the second day following the attack on the Turkish Baykar plant in Kyiv, where drones and their components are produced.
Two year old Angelinka was the youngest victim of the Russian missile and drone slaughter targeted at civilians in Kyiv on Thursday.
The tragic toddler died with her mother Nadiya, 24. The other children killed were aged 14 and 17.
‘Unfortunately, the number of casualties in Kyiv has risen to 23 people,’ announced Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.
‘My condolences to the families and loved ones.’
The grim search for more victims was still underway in Kyiv early today as the city marked a day of mourning for victims of Putin’s wanton aggression.
All but one of the 23 people who died were in a five-storey residential building that was destroyed in the south-eastern Darnytskyi district on Kyiv’s left bank.
A missile pummeled the building at about 3:00 am, causing it to collapse.
In a virtual meeting with the leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Denmark, Zelensky told his allies in the West to ‘keep the pressure’ on the Russian president to force him to the negotiating table.
‘Putin has not done what he said. It’s time to move. We need a strong joint signal,’ he said, adding: ‘Only at the level of leaders can the war truly be ended.’
He pushed those present to give details on what security guarantees would be put in place to protect Ukraine after the war.
‘Europe must not miss this opportunity – it should define real foundations for joint action,’ he told attendees.
A video shows the moment a Russian missile slammed into the British Council and EU buildings on Zhylyanska Street in a fireball explosion at around 5.40am before a second followed 20 seconds later – leaving it ‘severely damaged’.
While no EU staff was harmed, a security guard was injured in the British Council attack.
The British Council site, which offers educational courses and English language programmes, is run independently but receives sponsorship from the Foreign Office.
British nationals are recruited from the UK to teach at the centre, and many would likely have been inside had the strike occurred just a few hours later, after it opened at 9:00 am.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen accused Moscow of a ‘deliberate’ strike and ‘targeting the EU’.
The Russian ambassador to the UK and the Russian envoy to the EU were summoned to address the attacks.
In an evening address on Thursday, the Ukrainian president said: ‘This strike clearly shows that Russia’s goals have not changed.
‘They want war – and they are striking not only our people, not only our cities and communities.
‘Russia is now striking at everyone in the world who seeks peace. It is a strike against Ukraine.
‘It is a strike against Europe. And it is also a strike by Russia against President Trump, and against other global actors.
‘In Washington, we heard that Putin is supposedly ready to end the war – to meet at the leaders’ level and resolve key issues.
‘But instead, he chooses ballistics over any real steps toward peace.
‘He kills children in order not to talk about when and how peace will come. The problem is that he is not afraid to strike even against the leaders he makes promises to.
‘A clear response of the world to this evil is needed.’
Trump’s own response has been more muted but his hopes of an early Putin-Zelensky meeting to end the war now appeared in tatters.
This led Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to claim Trump was a Moscow agent.
‘The supreme leader of the world’s largest superpower is objectively a Soviet, Russian agent,’ he said.
‘He acts as an asset.
‘I’m not saying there is an alliance based on friendship or economic, ideological, and doctrinal complicity, no.
‘I am saying that objectively the new American leadership has brought strategic benefits to Russia.
‘In other words, they have turned from allies of one side into arbiters in this confrontation.’
But the U.S. state department approved the sale to Ukraine of more than 3,000 ERAM long-range air-to-ground cruise missiles and equipment worth £610 million.
And the EU is proposing a 25 mile ‘buffer zone’ on the border in a new move towards ending the war.
The European Commission is also developing a mechanism to use £173 billion in frozen Russian assets to pay for reconstruction of Ukraine after the war.
Russia was hit by Ukrainian drone strikes on Oryol city and region, triggering fires.
This came as a new analysis of Russian soldiers sent to their deaths during the war launched by Putin topped 200,000.
The findings by Meduza and Mediazona are based on analysis of inheritance data.
The total number of casualties – including those wounded and permanently disabled – is believed to be well in excess of one million.