Britain said the attack sabotaged peace efforts, while top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas summoned Russia’s EU envoy to Brussels over the strikes that damaged EU offices.
Diplomatic efforts to reach peace have stalled
The latest attack is the first major combined Russian mass drone and missile attack to strike Kyiv since US President Donald Trump met Putin in Alaska earlier this month to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
“Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X following the attack. “We expect a response from everyone in the world who has called for peace but now more often stays silent rather than taking principled positions.”
While a diplomatic push to end the war appeared to gain momentum shortly after that meeting, few details have emerged about the next steps.
Western leaders have accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts and avoiding serious negotiations while Russian troops move deeper into Ukraine. This week, Ukrainian military leaders conceded Russian forces have broken into an eighth region of Ukraine seeking to capture more ground.
Zelenskyy hopes for harsher US sanctions to cripple the Russian economy if Putin does not demonstrate seriousness about ending the war. He reiterated those demands following the latest attack.
Trump bristled this week at Putin’s stalling on an American proposal for direct peace talks with Zelenskyy. Trump said on Friday he expects to decide on next steps in two weeks if direct talks aren’t scheduled.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday said that it was “clear that a meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Putin will not take place.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized both Putin and Zelenskyy after the Thursday attack on Kyiv.
She said that Trump “was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised” by Russia’s Thursday air assault on Ukrainian capital.
Leavitt noted that Ukraine has also launched effective assaults on Russia’s oil industry in recent weeks.
“Perhaps both sides of this war are not ready to end it themselves,” Leavitt said. “The president wants it to end, but the leaders of these two countries … must want it to end as well.”
Russia says it targeted ‘military-industrial complex’
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out a strike against military air bases and companies “within Ukraine’s military-industrial complex” using long-range weapons, including Kinzhal missiles.
“All designated objects were hit,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine has ramped up domestic arms production to fight Russia’s invasion. Many weapons factories operate covertly, with some embedded in civilian areas with superior air defenses. Indiscriminate Russian attacks claiming to target Ukraine’s defense industry have killed many civilians.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said it shot down 102 Ukrainian drones overnight, mostly in the country’s south-west. A drone attack sparked a blaze at the Afipsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, local officials said, while a second fire was reported at the Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Samara region.
Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck refineries and other oil infrastructure in recent weeks in an attempt to weaken Russia’s war economy, causing gas stations in some Russian regions to run dry and prices to spike.
Ukraine’s national railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, reported damage to its infrastructure in the Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions, causing delays and requiring trains to use alternative routes.
