“Russia’s Largest Aerial Assault Yet: Kyiv Cabinet Building Ablaze, Three Civilians Killed—including Infant”

Russia’s largest overnight air attack of the war has set the main building of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv on fire and left three people dead, including an infant, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.

Russia hit Ukraine’s capital with drones and missiles, injuring 18 people and setting scores of buildings on fire, including .

A plume of smoke was seen rising from the roof of Kyiv’s cabinet of ministers building, although it was not immediately clear if the smoke was the result of debris or a direct hit, which would mark an escalation in Russia’s air campaign. Russia has so far avoided targeting government buildings in the city centre.

The building is the home of Ukraine’s cabinet, housing the offices of its ministers.

“For the first time, the government building was damaged by an enemy attack, including the roof and upper floors,” Ukraine’s prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. “We will restore the buildings, but lost lives cannot be returned.”

Russia’s overnight attack involved 805 drones and decoys, officials said. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, confirmed to the Associated Press that Sunday’s attack was the largest Russian drone strike since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Ukraine shot down and neutralized 747 drones and four missiles, according to a statement from the air force.

There were nine missile hits and 56 drone strikes in 37 locations across Ukraine. Debris from shot-down drones and missiles fell on eight locations.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the drone attacks killed the infant and a young woman, while a pregnant woman was among the five injured admitted to hospital.

Earlier Klitschko had said an elderly woman had died in a bomb shelter in the leafy Darnytskyi district to the east of the Dnipro River.

In the western district of Sviatoshynskyi, several floors of a nine-storey residential building were partially destroyed, Klitschko and emergency officials said.

Falling drone debris set off fires in a 16-storey apartment building and two other buildings, the mayor added.

Smoke billowed out of apartment buildings, some with floors partially collapsed and facades crumbled, in social media photographs posted by emergency officials.

Russia was “deliberately and consciously striking civilian targets”, the head of the capital’s military administration, Timur Tkachenko, said on Telegram.

Dozens of explosions also shook Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk, cutting power to some areas, mayor Vitalii Maletskyi said on Telegram. Russian strikes on Kryvyi Rih in the same region targeted transport and urban infrastructure, Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration, said on Telegram, but with no injuries reported.

In the southern city of Odesa, civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were damaged, with fires breaking out in several apartment blocks, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

Moscow did not immediately offer comment. Both sides deny targeting civilians, but thousands have died in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

With western Ukraine facing the threat of air attacks, Poland activated its own and allied aircraft to ensure air safety, the operational command of the Polish armed forces said