Russia launched a barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Kyiv in the early hours of Monday morning, officials have said.
The assault occurred as children were returning to school across Ukraine. Some pupils found classes cancelled because of damage from the attack. Several series of explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital.
Debris from intercepted missiles and drones fell in every district of Kyiv, wounding three people and damaging two kindergartens, the interior ministry said.
City authorities reported multiple fires.
After more than 900 days of war, Russia and Ukraine show no sign of letting up in the fight or moving closer to the negotiating table.
Both sides are pursuing ambitious ground offensives, with the Ukrainians driving into Russia’s Kursk region and the Russians pushing deeper into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine that is part of the industrial Donbas region.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Ukraine’s Kursk assault will not prevent Russian forces from advancing in eastern Ukraine.
“The main task that the enemy set for themselves – to stop our offensive in Donbas – they haven’t achieved it,” Mr Putin told students during a trip to Siberia.
He predicted that the Kursk offensive will fail and that Kyiv officials will want “to move to peace talks”.
Later on Monday, Mr Putin arrived in Mongolia for a state visit. Mongolia lies on the route of a planned new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China. He is due to hold talks with Mongolian president Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Tuesday.
Ukraine urged Mongolia last week to arrest Mr Putin on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court warrant last year, when it accused him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
The Kremlin has dismissed the accusation, saying it is politically motivated, and has said it has no worries about Mr Putin making the trip.
The warrant obliges the court’s 124 member states, including Mongolia, to arrest Mr Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory.
Speaking in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country’s operation in Kursk had drawn Russian troops away from southern Ukraine, but acknowledged that it had not yet succeeded in diverting Russian forces from the eastern front lines, where the city of Pokrovsk is at risk of falling.
“We see that it is difficult there, and the most combat-ready Russian brigades have been concentrated in this area because it has always been their main target – Donbas. The complete, total occupation of Donbas: Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
He said last month that the aim of the Kursk incursion is to create a buffer zone that might prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.
Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof, visiting Ukraine for the first time since taking office, travelled with Mr Zelenskiy to Zaporizhzhia, 40km from the front line.
They visited an underground school, and Mr Schoof announced his government would give Ukraine €200 million to help protect and repair the electricity infrastructure targeted almost daily by Russian bombs.
“It must never be normal for children to have to go to school underground. It must never become normal for people’s homes to be cold because power plants have been bombed,” Mr Schoof said.
He said the Netherlands would continue providing F-16 fighter jets and munitions to Ukraine and noted a plan floated last month by Republican US senator Lindsay Graham to let retired F-16 pilots from other countries join the fight in Ukraine.
– Agencies.