
Kyiv mayor says drones and missiles attack city, triggering fires
Ukraine's capital Kyiv was coming under a combined drone and missile attack early on Saturday, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said.
Timur Tkachenko, head of the capital's military administration, said two fires had broken out in the city's Sviatoshinskyi district. Drone fragments had hit the ground there and in three other districts.
Officials said anti-aircraft units were in action.
Reuters witnesses reported waves of drones flying over the city, which had been jolted by a series of explosions.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Arab News
17 minutes ago
- Arab News
Russian strike kills 5 in Ukraine, including a 1-year-old, hours after Trump-Putin call
PRYLUKY, Ukraine: At least five people, including a 1-year-old child, his mother and grandmother, were killed Thursday in a nighttime Russian drone attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky, officials said. Six drones hit a residential area in the city shortly before dawn, injuring nine others, according to authorities. The child killed was the grandson of the local fire chief, Ukraine's Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. The fire chief, identified by local officials as 50-year-old Oleksandr Lebid, 'arrived to respond to the aftermath right at his own home,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. 'It turned out that a Shahed drone hit his house.' The attack came just hours after US President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Trump, Putin said 'very strongly' that Russia will retaliate for Ukraine's stunning drone attacks on Russian military airfields on Sunday. US-led diplomatic efforts to stop the more than 3-year-long war have delivered no significant progress, and the grinding war of attrition has continued unabated. Child's mother feared drone attacks The mother of the 1-year-old killed in Pryluky was a police officer called Daryna Shyhyda, Ukraine's National Police said. 'Today our hearts are scorched by pain,' the police force wrote on Telegram. 'This is not just a loss — it is three generations of life uprooted.' Liudmyla Horbunova, 55, who lives across the street from where the Shahed drone hit, said Shyhyda had moved with her son last weekend to her parents' house from her home in Kyiv because she was scared of potential Russian attacks on the capital. 'She ran away from Shaheds in Kyiv, but they found her here, in Pryluky,' Horbunova told The Associated Press. Firefighters worked through charred debris and extinguished the remains of a fire that engulfed the home of Shyhyda's parents, leaving only a brick carcass and scattered toys, clothes and a family photo book. Horrific footage from Ukraine's city of Kharkiv last night, as Russians indiscriminately target densely populated high-rise buildings. — Kyiv Insider (@KyivInsider) June 5, 2025 Drones struck across regions Pryluky, which had a prewar population of around 50,000 people, lies about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Kyiv, the capital. The city is far from the front line and does not contain any known military assets. The last time Pryluky was struck was in November last year, when a Russian missile hit an administrative building and injured one person. Zelensky said a total of 103 drones and one ballistic missile targeted multiple Ukrainian regions overnight, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro and Kherson. 'This is another massive strike,' Zelensky said. 'It is yet another reason to impose the strongest possible sanctions and apply pressure collectively.' US peace effort remains stalled Zelensky, who has accepted a US ceasefire proposal and offered to meet with Putin in an attempt to break the stalemate in negotiations, wants more international sanctions on Russia to force it to accept a settlement. Putin has shown no willingness to meet with Zelensky, however, and has indicated no readiness to compromise. Germany's new leader Friedrich Merz was due to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the US on board with Western diplomatic and military support for Ukraine. Ukraine's top presidential aide, Andriy Yermak, met with senior American officials in Washington on Wednesday and called for greater US pressure on Russia, accusing the Kremlin of deliberately stalling ceasefire talks and blocking progress toward peace, according to a statement on the presidential website. Yermak, who traveled to the US as part of a Ukrainian delegation, met with senior American officials to bolster support for Ukraine's defense and humanitarian priorities. He said Ukraine urgently needs stronger air defense capabilities. More people wounded in Kharkiv Hours later, 19 people were injured in a Russian drone strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Those hurt included children, a pregnant woman, and a 93-year-old woman, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram. At around 1:05 a.m., Shahed-type drones struck two apartment buildings in the city's Slobidskyi district, causing fires and destroying several private vehicles. 'By launching attacks while people sleep in their homes, the enemy once again confirms its tactic of insidious terror,' Syniehubov wrote on Telegram. Russian aircraft also dropped four powerful glide bombs on the southern city of Kherson, injuring at least three people, regional authorities said.


Asharq Al-Awsat
2 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Germany's Merz Heads for Delicate Talks with Trump
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to meet with US President Donald Trump on Thursday, hoping to build a personal relationship despite discord over Ukraine and the threat of a trade war. A month into his job, the conservative Merz, 69, is a staunch transatlanticist at pains to maintain good ties with what he considers post-war Germany's "indispensable" ally, despite Trump's unyielding "America First" stance, said AFP. Merz will hope that his pledges to sharply increase Germany's NATO defense spending will please Trump, and that he can find common ground on confronting Russia after the mercurial US president voiced growing frustration with President Vladimir Putin. On Trump's threat to hammer the European Union with sharply higher tariffs, Merz, leader of the bloc's biggest economy, has argued that it must be self-confident in its negotiations with Washington, saying that "we're not supplicants". Despite the tensions, Merz said he was "looking forward" to his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. "Our alliance with America was, is, and remains of paramount importance for the security, freedom, and prosperity of Europe," he posted on X late Wednesday. His office has also voiced confidence that Merz will be spared the kind of public dressing down Trump delivered in the Oval Office to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa. Merz is looking ahead to his first in-person meeting with Trump "with great calmness and joy", his spokesman Stefan Kornelius said, pointing to their "very good relationship" so far. "Germany is the third-largest economy in the world, and we have a lot to offer as an economic partner of the USA," Kornelius said. "At the same time, a very constructive and positive relationship with America is very important to us, for our own economy and for the security of Germany and Europe." The two leaders -- both with business backgrounds and keen golf players -- are on first-name terms after several phone calls, Kornelius said, and Merz now has Trump's cellphone number on speed dial. Defense and trade Merz has been given the honor of staying at Blair House, the presidential guest residence on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House. Merz has even felt comfortable enough to have a little fun at Trump's expense, recently telling a TV interviewer that his every second or third word was "great". Whatever the personal chemistry, the policy issues are potentially explosive. Trump launched his roller-coaster series of trade policy shifts in April, with the threat of 50-percent US tariffs on European goods looming. Merz, who has sat on many corporate boards, is "very experienced in business, too -- the world from which Donald Trump comes," his chancellery chief of staff, Thorsten Frei, told the Funke media group. On the Ukraine war, where Germany strongly backs Kyiv, Merz will hope to convince Trump to heighten pressure on Putin through new sanctions to persuade him to agree to a ceasefire. Trump, 78, has recently expressed frustration with Putin, calling him "crazy", but without announcing concrete new measures. Merz's visit comes ahead of a G7 summit in Canada on June 15-17 and a NATO meeting in The Hague at the end of the month. Merz has said Germany is willing to follow a plan to raise defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP over coming years, with another 1.5 percent dedicated to security-related infrastructure. 'Calm and reasonable' Another potential flashpoint issue looms -- the vocal support Trump and some in his administration have given to the far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which came second in February elections. US Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Trump adviser Elon Musk have all weighed in in support of the AfD, which in Germany is shunned by all other political parties. When Germany's domestic intelligence service recently designated the AfD a "right-wing extremist" group, Rubio denounced the step as "tyranny in disguise". Merz slammed what he labelled "absurd observations" from Washington and said he "would like to encourage the American government... to largely stay out of" German domestic politics. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has also openly criticized Trump, saying this week that he frequently made statements "that seem directed against the fundamental foundations of our coexistence".


Asharq Al-Awsat
4 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Russian Drone Attack Kills Five, Injures 24 in Ukraine
A Russian drone attack killed the family of the local fire chief in Ukraine's northern town of Pryluky in Chernihiv region, Ukraine's interior minister said on Thursday. Minister Ihor Klymenko said the attack killed the fire chief's wife, daughter and one-year-old grandson, according to Reuters. "On this terrible night, the rescuer was on site with the fire and rescue team to deal with the aftermath of the enemy strikes," he wrote on Telegram, expressing his condolences. The family was among five people killed when Russia launched six drones to attack the town overnight, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said. Six more people were hospitalized, he added. Ukraine's northern and eastern regions have been a frequent target of Russian drones and missiles in the more than three-year-old war. Another Russian drone attack on Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv injured 18 people, including four children, Klymenko said. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the overnight strikes damaged seven apartment buildings, with direct hits on two. "It flew into our neighbors' apartment next door, and my child and I managed to run out into the hallway," resident Anastasiia Meleshchenko told Reuters at the scene, adding that the ceiling began to crumble after a blast. "Yesterday, workers had just finished repair work in my apartment after the previous attack," she said. Outside, wrecked cars were on the street and emergency services workers were inspecting the damage. There was no immediate comment from Russia.