Explosions heard across Ukrainian capital after ballistic missile strikes, with further blasts reported in other regions

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Russian drones and missiles have pounded the Ukrainian capital and other cities, killing six people including a six-month-old baby, a 12-year-old girl and a woman, and damaging key energy facilities and several high-rise residential buildings.

The attacks lasted most of Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning as Kyiv was hit by at least four ballistic missiles. A series of loud explosions could be heard across the city.

Rescue efforts continue after strikes that killed 38 people, as Ukraine president renews call for more air defences

Rescuers have continued to dig through the rubble of a children’s hospital in Kyiv after a wave of devastating Russian missile strikes across the country on Monday that killed 38 people, including four children.

On the eve of a Nato summit in Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, renewed his call for more air defences and said the world had the “necessary strength” to stop what he called “Russian terror”. The US president, Joe Biden, who is expected to meet Zelenskiy, described the strike as a “horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality”.

Rescuers search through rubble of country’s largest children’s hospital, as Zelenskiy vows to retaliate

Western and UN leaders have condemned a daylight Russian missile barrage that hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, leaving an unknown number trapped under the rubble, as strikes across the country killed 36 people in one of the deadliest attacks this year.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed retaliation as he said Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt hospital, the main treatment centre in the country for children with cancer, had taken a direct missile hit. The strike was part of one of the heaviest attacks on the capital since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

At least five people injured and a three-storey building damaged in latest wave of strikes

Russia has launched its third wave of missile strikes against Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in five days, as part of its escalating aerial bombardment of the city.

Five people were injured in the strike, with two of them taken to hospital, said the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, as Ukraine’s foreign minister called on international allies to supply more air defences to his country.

The injuries and damage appear to have been the result of falling missile debris as the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down two missiles over the city.