KYIV – Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Kyiv, officials said Monday, as children were returning to school across Ukraine. Some pupils found classes canceled 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.
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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 Monday that Ukraine’s Kursk assault won't 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,” 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.”
Speaking in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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 frontlines, 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,” Zelenskyy 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.
Russia launched 35 missiles and 26 Shahed drones at Ukraine overnight from Sunday to Monday, the Ukrainian air force said. Nine ballistic missiles, 13 cruise missiles and 20 drones were downed, it said.
Kyiv residents hurried into bomb shelters.
Oksana Argunova, an 18-year-old student, said she was still shaking after the scare.
“I woke up, my neighbor was shouting: ‘Let’s go down (to the shelter), there are big explosions.’ We all ran,” Argunova told The Associated Press.
Monday was the first day back at school after the summer vacation. In Ukraine, the day involves ceremonies and rituals, with students and often teachers wearing traditional costumes.
But the massive air assaults have taken a toll. In one last week, an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from Western partners crashed. The pilot, one of the few Ukrainians trained to fly the jets, was killed.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, visiting Ukraine for the first time since taking office, traveled with Zelenskyy to Zaporizhzhia, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the front line.
They visited an underground school, and Schoof announced his government would give Ukraine 200 million euros ($221 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,” 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 U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham to let retired F-16 pilots from other countries join the fight in Ukraine.
“That would be an interesting idea, because then you can just speed up the process of deploying the F-16s. But we have to look into those things, with all the countries involved with the F-16 coalition,” Schoof said.
In Kyiv, children and parents gathered outside a damaged school as firefighters put out flames and removed rubble.
One mother arrived with her 7-year-old daughter, Sophia, unaware it had been hit. It was Sophia’s first day at a new school, her mother said, after a frightening night.
“We hid in the bathroom, where it was relatively safe,” said the mother, who gave only her first name, Olena.
Ukraine and Russia are battering each other with regular long-range drone and missile strikes, sometimes launching more than 100 weapons in aerial attacks that suggest they are still pouring resources into weapon production.
Russian air defenses intercepted 158 Ukrainian drones overnight, including two over Moscow and nine over the surrounding region, the Defense Ministry said.
The Ukrainian headquarters of the Danish humanitarian organization DanChurchAid was destroyed by missile fragments, its head Jonas Nøddekær said.
Elsewhere, 18 people were injured in a Sunday evening strike on a center for social and psychological rehabilitation of children and an orphanage in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, regional authorities said. The regional prosecutor’s office said there were no children in the facility, and the injured included people in nearby homes.
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Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine; Emma Burrows in London; and Jan. M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine