Russian strikes on Kyiv kill at least four

Russian strikes hit Kyiv early Saturday, killing at least four people and wounding 15 others, including two teenagers, as explosions shook the Ukrainian capital and rescue crews searched damaged buildings, local officials said.

Kyiv’s military administration said four people were killed. Mayor Vitali Klitschko earlier put the death toll at at least three and said all 15 injured people had been taken to hospitals. The wounded included boys ages 13 and 17, and one person was in serious condition, Al Jazeera reported.

“Explosions in the city. Kyiv is under ballistic missile attack. Stay in shelters!” Klitschko wrote on Telegram as the attack unfolded.

Witnesses told Reuters that more than a dozen explosions reverberated across the city. Agence France-Presse journalists also reported hearing blasts, saying more than 10 explosions sounded in a row and were strong enough to set off car alarms on the streets.

Klitschko said residents were trapped in damaged buildings in the Shevchenkivskyi and Solomyanskyi districts. Fires and damage were reported elsewhere in the capital, including burning warehouses in Darnytskyi and debris falling on buildings in Holosiivskyi. Emergency crews remained at the scene as rescue efforts continued, Al Jazeera reported.

The latest attack followed a deadly week of Russian strikes across Ukraine. On Thursday, a Russian ballistic missile and drone barrage killed at least eight civilians, including children, and wounded dozens more. The United Nations has found that June was the deadliest month for civilians in Ukraine since April 2022, as Moscow increased long-range strikes on towns and cities across the country.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Kyiv in recent months, Al Jazeera reported, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of air defenses capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed allies for more support and has been negotiating with the United States over licenses to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles, a key part of Ukraine’s efforts to counter Russian attacks.

Zelenskyy said his meeting with President Donald Trump this week was “good” and that they discussed licenses for producing Patriot missile interceptors. CBS News reported that Trump and Zelenskyy also met earlier this month on the sidelines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Turkey, where Trump announced the United States would allow Ukraine to build its own Patriot missiles.

On Friday, however, Trump said talks were continuing and that Washington had not yet agreed to the proposal, Al Jazeera reported. He said the United States had to be “very careful about letting somebody build them.”

“You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful,” Trump said. “Now we have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology. And I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, there’s people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you.”

Ukraine has also escalated retaliatory strikes on Russia in recent months, targeting energy and logistics infrastructure partly to pressure Moscow toward negotiations after nearly four-and-a-half years of war. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in June that Ukrainian strikes were causing “problems” for Russia, saying Russian authorities were “observing a certain shortage, but it’s not critical.”

Russian online retail giant Wildberries said Friday that its logistics facility in Volgograd caught fire after an overnight attack, the latest in a series of strikes on the company’s facilities. Kyiv has accused Wildberries, which employs thousands of people and has become a major part of the Russian economy, of storing drone parts and helping the Russian army.