Russia strikes Kyiv, killing one and damaging major bridge, energy infrastructure, officials say

Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, damaging energy infrastructure and a major bridge across the Dnipro River, officials say.

Explosions rocked the city as Russia fired multiple waves of ballistic missiles, several of them hitting the Northern Bridge, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

He describes an “extremely difficult” situation for power, heating and water supplies in Kyiv, where temperatures hovered near freezing on Saturday morning. Governor Tymur Tkachenko says energy facilities in at least three districts of the Kyiv region had been hit.

One person was killed and eight people, including a child, were wounded in the overnight attack, which also damaged homes and non-residential buildings, authorities said.

Moscow’s defense ministry says it carried out a massive strike on what it describes as targets in Ukraine’s military-industrial sector, as well as energy and transport infrastructure in and around Kyiv.

Saturday’s strikes also damaged energy infrastructure in the central Zhytomyr region, the regional governor and Russia’s defense ministry say.

They come days before a new round of three-way talks in Abu Dhabi between Ukrainian and Russian officials, as part of a US-backed peace push that has so far yielded few results.