At least 14 people killed in Russian overnight attack on Kyiv

Euronews

4 hours ago

A Russian missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight on Tuesday killed at least 14 people and wounded more than three dozen others, according to Ukrainian officials.
The attack is the latest in a series of mass drone and missile attacks on Kyiv. It came at a time when world leaders convened at the Group of Seven – or G7 – meeting in Canada, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to attend.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters at the scene that a US citizen was among those killed in the attacks after suffering shrapnel wounds from the blast. Explosions could be heard for hours throughout the night in the early hours of Tuesday.
Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block, according to Klymenko. He noted the death toll is likely to rise as emergency workers descended to the scene of a collapsed apartment building to search for bodies buried under the rubble.
People were wounded in the city's Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Kyiv's Mayor Vitali Klitschko said fires broke out in two other Kyiv districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
Canada, which assumed the presidency of the G7 this year, invited Zelenskyy to the summit, where he is expected to hold one-on-one meetings with world leaders on Tuesday.
Zelenskyy was set to meet with US President Donald Trump in Canada on Tuesday, though the White House announced that Trump would be returning unexpectedly to Washington on Monday night instead of Tuesday due to rising tensions in the Middle East.
Russia has launched a record number of drones and missiles in recent weeks. Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine's Security Service agency executed an operation targeting war planes in air bases deep inside Russian territory.
The Ukrainian leader says little progress has emerged from direct peace talks held in Istanbul, with the exception of prisoner exchanges, expected to conclude next week.
At this year's Paris Air Show, fighter jets are taking a backseat. Unmanned and autonomous technologies are driving the future of defence and dominating the conversation at Le Bourget airport in northern Paris.
With 2,400 exhibitors from 48 countries and 300,000 visitors expected, the world's biggest aerospace event opened against an intense backdrop of global tensions.
As Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year and tensions are soaring between Israel and Iran, it has become urgent for Europe to modernise its defence capabilities.
On Monday, Italian giant Leonardo and Turkey's Baykar Technologies announced a joint venture to co-develop a new generation of unmanned systems, with the first drones expected to be delivered in 2026.
'When it comes to unmanned systems, Europe is quite behind,' said Leonardo CEO Roberto Cingolani.
'First of all, I think the target is to fill the gap… We need to develop different platforms with different payloads... and offer them to different countries. That will already be a very important target in the short to mid-term," explained Cingolani to a group of reporters.
Cingolani stressed that Europe will soon need not just drones, but also land and sea-based systems. 'The Ukrainian war has completely changed the landscape,' he said. 'We know that we have to be ready.'
For defence consultant Xavier Tytelman, the turning point for this edition of the fair is the industrialisation of high-intensity warfare.
"In the past, we said 'We are going to make drones'. Now, we are actually offering drones with well-defined prices, which shows a very strong trend of military industrialisation," he told Euronews.
Europe's previous lag on large drone platforms may no longer matter. Smaller, more agile systems that are cheaper to produce and easier to deploy are now proving decisive on the battlefield.
Beyond strategy and scale, sovereignty has become a defining theme aduringt this year's edition.
The push to develop 'ITAR-free' (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) equipment -free from U.S. export restrictions - is visible across the exhibition area.
'There's one fundamental element here, and that's the return of sovereignty. You see it everywhere with many booths labelled 'ITAR Free.' That means there are no American components, so the U.S. can't prevent them from using their own equipment, like they did in Ukraine, where we supplied missiles that couldn't be used because they contained U.S. parts," explained Tytelman.
"Now, all around us, Europeans are organising themselves to be more sovereign, independent, to work together, to complement each other's technological capabilities, and to achieve 100% European industrialisation. That's another major deep, structural trend.'