Russian attacks on Ukraine kill three, including a 12-year-old child

Deadly attacks hit Kyiv, Odesa, and Dnipro, while Russia says two children killed in Ukrainian attacks.

Russian strikes have killed at least 14 people in Ukraine, according to local authorities, after Moscow launched a wave of attacks on its neighbour overnight.

Moscow has fired missiles as well as hundreds of drones on its neighbour almost nightly since the beginning of the four-year war, with Kyiv regularly carrying out strikes within Russia in response to its attacks.

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The latest attacks come after the end of a 32-hour Orthodox Easter truce marred by accusations of mass violations, according to both countries.

Missile and drone attacks on the southern port city of Odesa killed seven people, the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak, wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

Strikes on the capital Kyiv killed at least four people, including a 12-year-old child, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said.

Another three people died in the central city of Dnipro, according to Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the regional administration.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said an air raid warning for Kyiv remained in place early in the morning, urging residents to stay in their shelters, adding that at least 45 people were injured in the strikes.

Meanwhile, on the Russian side, two children were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Black ⁠Sea port of Tuapse in the southern Krasnodar Krai region, its governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on Thursday.

“A terrorist drone attack on residential buildings in Tuapse has claimed the lives of two minors aged five and 14,” he wrote on Telegram. The attack also sparked a large fire.

Widespread damage

The Russian air raids on Kyiv began early on Thursday and caused widespread damage across the Podilskyi, Obolonskyi and Desnyanskyi districts, according to the city’s mayor.

Across the Ukrainian capital, blasts set buildings and cars alight, shattered windows and damaged the facades of hotels, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in an assessment of the damage posted on Telegram.

Debris from the attacks caused fires in a residential building in Podilskyi, damaged a hotel and caused a home to collapse.

“A child and her mother were rescued from the rubble,” Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

In Obolonskyi district, the strikes damaged an office building and set cars ablaze. At least four medics were injured as a result of repeated shelling, Klitschko said.

Falling debris also set off a fire at a two-storey residential building in the Desnyanskyi district, he added.

Photos posted online showed fires burning out of control and smoke billowing skyward.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Failed diplomacy

Recent months have seen several rounds of United States-brokered negotiations fail to bring the warring parties closer to an agreement to stop the fighting, triggered by Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

The process has stalled further since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East, with Washington’s attention having shifted towards Iran.

But even before the US-Israel war on Iran, progress towards a peace deal in Ukraine had been slow, due to differences over the issue of territory.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

But Russia has rejected this, saying it wants the whole of the Donetsk region despite it being partly controlled by Ukraine – a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.