Russian strikes killed at least 12 people in Ukraine overnight, officials said yesterday, as Kyiv and Moscow traded fire even as they completed their biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” as Russia launched a second straight night of massive airstrikes, including on the capital Kyiv.
The attacks came even as the two countries completed their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000 captured soldiers and civilian prisoners exchanged by each side.
Photo REUTERS
The death toll from the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr, officials said.
“Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on social media.
“The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only encourages [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he said, adding: “Sanctions will certainly help.”
European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas called for “the strongest international pressure on Russia to stop this war.”
“Last night’s attacks again show Russia bent on more suffering and the annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims harmed and killed,” she wrote on social media.
The renewed strikes came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones overnight Friday to Saturday, which wounded 15, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military yesterday said that it had shot down 45 Russian missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.
Meanwhile, Russia said it had brought down 110 Ukrainian drones.
Four people were reported dead in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region, and one in Mykolaiv in the south.
Emergency services said 16 people were also injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack.”
“We saw the whole street was on fire,” a 65-year-old retired woman, Tetiana Iankovska, said in Makhalivka just southwest of Kyiv.
Another retiree who survived the strikes, Oleskandr, 64, said he had no faith in talks around a ceasefire.
“We don’t need talks, but weapons, a lot of weapons to stop them. Because Russia understands only force, nothing else,” he said.
Russia said yesterday it had exchanged another 303 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) for the same number of Russian soldiers held by Kyiv — the last phase of the prisoner swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16.
Russia and Ukraine had over three days “carried out the exchange of 1,000 people for 1,000 people,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
Zelenskiy confirmed the swap was complete.
Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on Friday and 307 in the second stage on Saturday.
Russia has signaled it would send Ukraine its terms for a peace settlement after the exchange, without saying what those terms would be.
US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated the two countries for the swap.
“This could lead to something big,” he wrote on social media.
Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.
An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a hospital in the northern Chernihiv region, emaciated but smiling and waving to crowds waiting outside.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” 31-year-old soldier Konstantin Steblev said on Friday as he stepped back onto Ukrainian soil after three years in captivity.
One of the soldiers formerly held captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, said that it was hard to express his emotional homecoming.
Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days.
“It’s impossible to describe. I can’t put it into words. It’s very joyful,” he said.
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