Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cut short a visit to Dublin after warning that Russia was preparing a major overnight attack, hours before Moscow launched a large-scale missile and drone assault on Kyiv that killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens, Ukrainian officials said.
The widespread bombardment, which triggered air raid alerts across most of Ukraine, targeted civilian infrastructure and hit all 10 administrative districts of the capital on both sides of the Dnipro River.
Kyiv City Military Administration Head Tymur Tkachenko and Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that the casualties included at least two children. In the Desnianskyi district, a direct hit caused the partial collapse of a nine-story residential building, trapping several residents beneath the rubble as emergency crews conducted rescue operations. Additional strikes ignited a major fire at a central hotel in the Shevchenkivskyi district and severely damaged multi-story residential towers in the Holosiivskyi and Pecherskyi areas.
Zelenskyy attended a ceremony at Dublin Castle on Wednesday as Ireland assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. The attacks overshadowed Ireland’s first day holding the rotating presidency and putting Ukraine’s security and EU membership bid at the centre of talks in the Irish capital.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, leader of the Irish government, met Zelenskyy to discuss advancing Ukraine’s EU accession process, which formally opened its first negotiating cluster under the previous Cypriot presidency. Zelenskyy urged the EU to maintain its sanctions pressure on Russia, warning that companies in EU member states were still supplying materials to Moscow and calling for tougher measures against Russia’s shadow fleet.
