Russia Watch

Entire residential buildings were demolished in Ukraine’s capital as Russian launched a “massive and virtually nonstop” aerial barrage on Kyiv and other major cities over the last two nights, according to Ukrainian officials. They said more than 1,500 drones and over 50 missiles were launched in the last two days.

At least seven people were killed in Kyiv, many in a strike that leveled an apartment building overnight, while 20 more remain missing, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said he had met with his top staff on Thursday about “a massive and virtually nonstop Russian attack that lasted nearly 48 hours.”

“This is a deliberate terrorist tactic by the Russians, who amassed drones and missiles over a period of time and intentionally calculated the strike so that its scale would be significant, creating the greatest possible difficulties for our air defense,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

Vladimir Putin has threatened Kyiv with his most massive strike of the war if Ukrainian drones disrupt his major military parade in Moscow on Saturday. His defence ministry warned that civilians and diplomats should leave the city promptly if Volodymyr Zelensky attacks the Red Square showpiece, citing a rapid and massive retaliatory missile strike.

The Russian warning implies a hit by the hypersonic Oreshnik missile, which Putin boasts has the power of a full nuclear explosion even in its conventional mode. Putin said previously that using several such systems at once would be comparable in strength to a nuclear strike. His favourite newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, warned today that Oreshnik also has a nuclear configuration.

Vladimir Putin has threatened Kyiv with the most massive strike of the war if Ukrainian drones disrupt his major military parade in Moscow this Saturday. His defence ministry warned that civilians and diplomats should leave the city promptly if Volodymyr Zelensky attacks the Red Square showpiece, citing a rapid and massive retaliatory missile strike.

A gunman who killed at least six people in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, before taking hostages and barricading himself inside a supermarket on Saturday has been shot and killed by police, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s special tactical police units stormed the store after attempts to contact the gunman with a negotiator failed, the head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, Ihor Klymenko, said in a statement on social media. The attacker was killed while resisting arrest, he said.

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Klymenko said that the gunman had killed four bystanders while on the street, before entering the supermarket and killing a fifth person.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that a sixth victim, a young woman, died from her injuries in the hospital.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw the bodies of the victims in the street covered by emergency blankets before they were taken away.