Kyiv Mayor Tells Residents to Leave Due to Heat Issues

Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people in the capital. The intense barrage and launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress toward agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a US-led peace deal is struck, per the AP. The leaders of Britain, France, and Germany condemned the attack as "escalatory and unacceptable," and the EU's top foreign policy envoy said Russian President Vladimir Putin's reply to diplomacy was "more missiles and destruction."

Ukrainian officials said four people were killed and at least 25 wounded in Kyiv as apartments were struck overnight. Those killed included an emergency medical aid worker, per Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. Four doctors and one police officer were injured while responding to the attacks, authorities said. About half of snowy Kyiv's apartment buildings—nearly 6,000—were left without heat amid daytime temperatures of about 18 degrees Fahrenheit, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Water supplies also were disrupted. Municipal services restored power and heat to public facilities, including hospitals and maternity wards, using portable boiler units, he noted.

The Kyiv Post notes that temps are expected to drop even further in coming days, reaching into the negatives. Klitschko is now advising Kyiv residents who can do so to ditch the capital for that reason, at least temporarily, as it will soon be "impossible" to remain in their unheated homes in those kind of conditions. The attack also damaged the Qatari Embassy in Kyiv, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who noted that Qatar has played a key role in mediating the exchange of prisoners of war, per the AP. He called for a "clear response" from the international community, particularly from the US, which he said Russia takes seriously.

Ukraine's Security Service said it identified debris from the Oreshnik missile in the Lviv region in the country's west. It was fired from Russia's Kapustin Yar test range near the Caspian Sea in southwestern Russia and targeted civilian infrastructure, investigators said. Russia's Defense Ministry said the attack was in retaliation for what Moscow claimed was a Ukrainian drone strike on one of Putin's residences last month. Both the US and Ukraine have rejected the Russian claim. More here.