Ukraine war briefing: Both sides vow to escalate fighting after Russia’s deadly Kyiv barrage

Ukraine and Russia have promised fresh assaults after Moscow launched a huge barrage on Kyiv, killing at least 27 people, tearing open apartment buildings and sending tens of thousands of people to shelters. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday his forces would “definitely” retaliate for the overnight pummelling of the capital as he inspected the site of an apartment block partially destroyed in the attack. In Moscow, the Kremlin vowed to further ramp up the “pressure” on Kyiv as rescuers scoured the rubble for survivors. Mayor Vitali Klitschko described it as the “enemy’s most massive attack on the capital”.

Zelenskyy urged allies to send more air defences and asked the US for licences to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles. “Air defence supplies for Ukraine are an absolute and critical priority,” he said on Facebook. The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said she would propose new sanctions on Moscow over the attack, while UN chief António Guterres reiterated his call for a ceasefire.

Donald Trump “wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends”, a US official said in Washington after the Kyiv barrage. The president “remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done”, the official said. US efforts to broker a ceasefire have so far failed. Zelenskyy called on Ukraine’s allies to discuss speeding up air-defence aid at the Nato summit in Ankara next week, which Trump will attend, and has said he hopes ​to have ​a meeting ​with the president on the ​summit sidelines. ‌

A Ukrainian publishing house said it had lost about 800,000 books when a warehouse was destroyed in Russia’s strikes on Kyiv. BookChef Publishing, which is one of Ukraine’s largest publishers and includes books by George Orwell and Barack Obama, posted pictures on Telegram of the destroyed building with smouldering piles of rubble around and firefighters working at the scene. The Ukrainian branch of the Red Cross, meanwhile, said its key warehouse was destroyed in the strikes, with about $2m worth of humanitarian aid lost.

German prosecutors have accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe, a charge likely to ignite tensions between Kyiv and Berlin, its biggest military backer. Deborah Cole reports that a suspect who was arrested last August in Italy and extradited to Germany in November was indicted this week. Zelenskyy said on Wednesday he was yet to receive full details of the indictment and it was too early to comment.

Two people were killed and ⁠another eight injured in Russian attacks overnight on ⁠Ukraine, officials ⁠said on ​Telegram in the early hours of Friday. In ⁠the bordering Sumy region, two people were killed and ⁠one injured after drones hit ​a house, the regional ‌military administration chief said. In Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, seven people were injured after ‌a missile strike, said the city’s defence council head.

Russian attacks on Thursday killed three people in ⁠eastern Ukraine, regional officials said earlier. One person died and three were injured around the town of Nikopol, near the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia ⁠nuclear power plant, according to the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor, and a seven-year-old ‌child was killed ‌and two other children injured further north-east near the town of Synelnykove. In the Donetsk region, Russian forces bombed the town of Oleksandrivka, ​killing one person and injuring two, the governor said.

A suspect has been identified in the investigation into a parcel bombing that seriously wounded a sanctioned Ukraine-born multimillionaire and two others in Monaco, the principality’s prosecutor’s office said. “An arrest warrant has been issued for the suspect, who will be the subject of an Interpol red notice from this evening,” the prosecutor’s office added on Thursday. France’s Le Figaro daily and BFMTV said the suspect, who was captured on CCTV wearing a black fisherman’s hat, is believed to be a woman who tried to pass as a man.