Russia launched a major missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early on July 6, blasting residential buildings and killing at least 8 people, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of an impending Russian strike.
Multiple loud explosions and air raid sirens were heard in the early morning hours in the capital, witnesses said, with cities throughout the country also reporting alerts against incoming projectiles.
“The enemy is hitting with ballistic missiles,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on Telegram. “Please stay in shelters.”
“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their normal lives,” he added. He later said at least eight people had been killed and 24 injured.
The attack comes two days after US President Donald Trump held separate phone conversations with Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, pressing Washington’s effort to position itself as the key mediator in a conflict.
The strikes also come just ahead of a NATO summit set for Ankara, where Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with Trump on the sidelines of the event as he seeks to keep the US engaged in supporting his country in its battle against Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022.
Zelenskyy Warns Of Attack
On July 5, Zelenskiy warned that Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russia was preparing a new massive strike.
“This behaviour is typical of Putin: Right after America’s Independence Day and before the NATO Summit in Ankara. Russia wants to bring more evil and kill people,” Zelenskyy wrote in a Facebook post.
“Any delay with missiles for our air defense – missiles for Patriots [air defence systems] – means the loss of lives and encourages Russia to continue the war,” he wrote.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram that a missile struck a residential building in the city’s Podil district.
A woman carries a dog at the site of an apartment building damaged during a Russian missile and drone strike in Kyiv on July 6.
“People are trapped on the seventh to ninth floors,” he wrote, adding that debris had fallen on a second residential building in the same area.
Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas recently as the peace process has stalled, with special emphasis on the capital.
Ukrainian officials said at least 30 people were killed and scores of others wounded in the large-scale attack on Kyiv on July 2, which caused fires and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings across several districts.
The scale of that assault drew swift condemnation from lawmakers in Washington.
Republican Joe Wilson of South Carolina, a long-time backer of US support for Ukraine, called the strikes further proof that the Kremlin is faltering militarily.
“This horrible war crime is yet more evidence that Russia is badly losing its war,” Wilson told RFE/RL. “The USA and its allies should do even more of what it’s doing. The strategy is working. Russia is losing.”
Russia denies that it targets civilian areas despite widespread evidence of such attacks.
Sevastopol Blackout
Meanwhile, Sevastopol, a city of some 500,000 people in Crimea — Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014 — was left without electricity on July 6 after a Ukrainian attack on energy infrastructure, Kremlin-installed officials said.
“As a result of an enemy attack on energy infrastructure outside Sevastopol, our city was temporarily left without power supply,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, the governor appointed by Moscow, wrote on Telegram.
A drone campaign by Ukraine has led to rolling blackouts and widespread fuel shortages as well as soaring black market prices on the peninsula. Kyiv has launched an effort to isolate Crimea, targeting fuel trucks, bridges, and other infrastructure sites, to reverse the illegal annexation.
Russia-installed authorities in Crimea have suspended fuel sales to private individuals and businesses amid a severe fuel shortage, and residents are reporting empty shelves in grocery stores and purchase limits on several basic goods.
