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Russia hammered Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with drones in daylight attacks on Wednesday, hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to address world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
Two people were killed and 23 were wounded in Kyiv, and palls of black smoke floated above the city following the latest in what have been daily Russian attacks that torment Ukrainian civilians.
The drones set off fires and damaged buildings in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine overnight, authorities said.
Ukrainian Railways chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky said Kyiv’s rail network was “under fire” and urged “maximum” vigilance from passengers using the city’s central station.
In Zaporizhzhia, in southeastern Ukraine, two men aged 37 and 39 were wounded by a strike that started a large fire at a shopping mall.
Emergency services said the fire spread across about 6,000 square meters before coming under control.
In Ukraine’s southern Black Sea port of Odesa, the captain of a cargo ship was killed in a Russian attack, part of a wave of strikes from both sides on commercial vessels designed to hit export revenues.
The head of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper, said the Ukrainian captain was in charge of the vessel, which was sailing on the Black Sea under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda.
At least 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been hit on the Black Sea since the start of the conflict, Turkey’s IMEAK chamber of shipping said.
Around 70% of those attacks took place in the first eight months of this year.
Turkey, whose vessels are increasingly in the firing line, has sent a proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end strikes on civilian ships but the two foes have failed to act on it.
“The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea are unacceptable, regardless of who is responsible,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
International support
Zelenskyy is in New York for the annual UN gathering as part of his diplomatic effort to shore up and recruit further international support for his country’s gruelling fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, who has shown impatience with the lack of progress in talks aimed at ending the war and the escalating aerial attacks by both sides this year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is accused by NATO officials and European governments of sabotage, espionage and other hybrid attacks, is not scheduled to attend the General Assembly this year.
Ukraine has hit back at Russia by damaging oil refineries that are a vital pillar of the country’s economy.
Zelenskyy said at the start of his US visit that he had proposals to make about possible de-escalation in the war.
Urgent issues for Kyiv are halting devastating Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and ensuring Ukrainian grain can be shipped to world markets through the Black Sea despite the war.
Ukraine also needs more US-made Patriot air defence systems as a shield against Russian ballistic missiles, but Patriots are in short supply after the war in Iran began.
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its forces struck Ukraine’s military-industrial and energy sector facilities, logistics centres and sea vessels overnight.
The ministry said its air defences intercepted more than 500 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions, as well as illegally annexed Crimea and waters of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
Additional sources • AP, AFP