By Yurii Kovalenko and Anastasiia Malenko
KYIV (Reuters) -A predawn Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital killed at least one civilian and injured four others on Wednesday, sparking several fires in the city of three million people, Ukrainian officials said.
Residents woke to a series of powerful explosions that shook the capital around 0230 GMT as local officials said air defences were engaging the largest ballistic missile salvo to target Kyiv in weeks.
Nearly three years since Russia launched its invasion, the attack comes amid a concerted peace push by U.S. President Donald Trump who has said his team is in touch with both Kyiv and Moscow and that he wants a rapid end to the bloodshed.
A column of smoke could be seen rising above the city in the aftermath of the attack as an emergency services crew sifted through rubble next to the damaged buildings.
“We don’t have windows, everything is broken here. It’s horrible,” Anzhela Karnatova told Reuters about damage to her office as temperatures in the capital hovered around minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early hours.
Another Kyiv resident, Nina Kyslenko, said she had come to the dry cleaner’s where she works to survey the damage after receiving a call from the police who told her the windows and doors had been destroyed in the attack.
“There were explosions all morning… Everything is ruined,” she said of her dry cleaning shop, where shards of glass were scattered around the floor.
The air force said it shot down six of seven ballistic missiles fired overnight. Out of 123 drones, the military shot down 71 and likely used electronic countermeasures against 40 more, it added.
A nine-year-old child was among the injured, local officials wrote on Telegram.
“This Russian terror against Ukraine will not stop on its own,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram app after the attack, urging unity among his country’s Western backers in support of a just end to the war.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not preparing for peace – he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities.”
Photos shared by the state emergency services showed rescuers putting out flames engulfing the carcass of a non-residential building in the region surrounding Kyiv.
The overnight attack also damaged critical infrastructure and injured two people in the northern region of Chernihiv, local officials said.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Valentyn Ogirenko and Serhiy Karazy in Kyiv; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Anastasiia Malenko; Editing by Bernaette Baum, Tom Balmforth and Gareth Jones)
