Ukraine war live: Russia launches ‘largest missile attack’ in months on Kyiv

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” once Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Mr Zelensky conceded the battlefield situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making advances, adding that Russian president Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal.

In an interview on Saturday, the Ukrainian president said he had a “constructive exchange” with US president-elect Trump during a phone conversation following his victory against Kamala Harris.

Read Jabed Ahmed’s full report:

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine is defending itself against “absolute evil”, as he shares footage of the devastation following what Kyiv says is Russia’s largest missile attack in months.

“Russian terrorists are once again trying to intimidate us with cold and blackouts, repeating their actions and trying to get results from them,” Mr Zelensky said.

“The entire world sees and knows that we are defending ourselves against absolute evil, which understands no language but force. We need unity, the world needs unity. Only together can we stop this evil.”

Russia used nearly 140 missiles of different types, 900 guided aerial bombs and over 600 strike drones, Mr Zelensky added.

“Efforts to address the consequences of the combined attack on our infrastructure in the Rivne, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Volyn, and Odesa regions are ongoing.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has taken a thinly-veiled dig at German chancellor Olaf Scholz after he held a phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday.

“Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure,” Mr Sybiha wrote on X on Sunday morning.

“This is war criminal Putin’s true response to all those who called and visited him recently. We need peace through strength, not appeasement.”

He appeared to be taking direct aim at Mr Scholz following his discussiong with Putin, in which he called for Russian forces to retreat from Ukraine and for Moscow and Kyiv to open talks for a “just and lasting peace”.

Ukrainian air defences destroyed 102 Russian missiles and 42 drones during the major overnight strike, the air force said on Sunday.

Russian forces launched a total of 120 missiles of multiple different types, including hypersonic missiles, alongside 90 drones, Kyiv said.

The scale of the damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has not yet been clarified.

Poland and its allies carried out an air operation in response to a large-scale Russian missile attack on western Ukraine.

The Polish military says “regular pairs of fighter jets have been scrambled, and ground-based air defence and radar systems have been placed on high alert”, according to a statement from the Polish armed forces via Ukrainska Pravda.

“Attention, the operation of Polish and allied aircraft in our airspace has begun due to a large-scale attack by the Russian Federation, which has launched cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles against targets located, in particular, in western Ukraine,” the statement adds.

“The Operational Command is monitoring the current situation, and the subordinate assets and personnel remain in full readiness for immediate response.”

Two railway workers have been killed in a Russian drone attack on a depot in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Three other railway workers were also injured in the attacks, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

A 66-year-old woman was killed in in her car in the Chervonohrad district of the Lviv region after the fall of Russian missile wreckage. Two other men were injured in the attack, with one taken to hospital.

The main heating pipe in the area was damaged, leaving 6,000 people without heating, and 12 garages caught fire amid the bombardment.

Russian strikes on Ukraine have “seriously damaged” equipment at the thermal power stations owned by the country’s largest energy provider, the company said on Sunday.

Employees are working on repairing the equipment, DTEK said on social media, but it did not specify what had been hit.