Russia launched a massive aerial assault on Ukraine’s capital and across the country early Sunday, killing at least four people, including a 12-year-old girl, the Ukrainian government said, as Russia’s top diplomat warned that any aggression against Moscow would draw a “decisive response.”
Poland scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace during the overnight attack, just weeks after Russian drones entered its airspace as it continues to pummel Ukraine with some of the largest attacks since it launched its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
The “massive Russian attack” on Ukraine lasted more than 12 hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.
“As of now, four people have been reported killed in Kyiv, including a 12-year-old girl,” he wrote on X, adding that a number of residential and civilian buildings had been struck, including a building at a cardiology center and a bread production facility.
Russia carried out 81 airstrikes and dropped 156 guided aerial bombs, launching over 5,000 attacks in total including thousands of “kamikaze” drones, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy noted that the attack came as the United Nations General Assembly is wrapping up a week of high-level annual meetings in New York.
“This is exactly how Russia declares its true position,” he said. “Moscow wants to keep fighting and killing, and it deserves the toughest pressure from the world.”
The U.S.-led NATO military alliance warned Russia last week that it would use all means to defend against any further breaches of its airspace, after a series of unprecedented Russian incursions raised alarms across Europe, violations that Russia has denied.
Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russia would expand its war beyond Ukraine by attacking another European country.
“Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted to world leaders Saturday that his nation does not intend to attack Europe, but warned Ukraine’s allies against direct action against Moscow.
“Russia has never had and does not have any such intentions” of attacking European or NATO countries, he said at the U.N. General Assembly. “However, any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response. There should be no doubt about this among those in NATO and the E.U.”
Lavrov also took a measured tone toward the U.S. after President Donald Trump met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, saying Moscow had “some hopes” to keep talking with Washington.
Trump said after meeting with Zelenskyy in New York last week that Ukraine could potentially reclaim all of the territory occupied by Russia, a dramatic change in his rhetoric on the war that experts say is not being backed up by action.
Trump had long maintained that an end to the war would require Ukraine ceding territory, but months of failed diplomacy have seemingly fueled his frustrations with Putin.
Lavrov said Moscow appreciates Trump’s effort to revive talks between the two nations, telling reporters after his U.N. speech that Russia and the U.S. were “united in this position, in diplomacy.”
But he accused unnamed European countries of “kissing up to their friends from Washington,” and said he believed the U.S. might opt for sanctions on Russia over diplomacy.
“This is a path without any promise. It won’t succeed,” Lavrov said. “However, frank dialogue on any matters — well, we’ll see that the U.S. is prepared for that, and we’re also prepared to conduct it.”
