Russia strikes Kyiv as Moscow and Washington accuse Zelenskyy of intransigence

• Russia pounded Kyiv with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 70. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would cut short a trip to South Africa and return to Kyiv following the attack.

• Zelenskyy has clashed again with U.S. President Donald Trump over efforts to end the three-year-old conflict. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia accused Zelenskyy of wrecking diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace deal after he refused to recognize Russia's claims to Crimea. READ MORE BELOW

• Russian troops have taken control of the village of Bohdanivka in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, according to the Defense Ministry.

• Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, said he may meet John Ratcliffe, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, saying the pair had a "very constructive" phone conversation.

• The Kremlin insists Russia is not holding talks with Europe or the U.S. about allowing the U.S. government's International Development Finance Corporation to control a natural gas pipeline from Russian energy giant Gazprom across Ukraine to Europe.

• South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa said he had spoken to Donald Trump on the Ukraine conflict and the need to foster good bilateral relations.

• Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if it faces aggression by Western countries, Moscow's top security official, Sergei Shoigu said.

• Two Swedish fighter jets under NATO command were scrambled on Thursday over the Baltic Sea to escort away a Russian reconnaissance plane approaching Polish airspace, Sweden's armed forces said.

• Russia has sharply criticized plans by Japan to use profits from frozen Russian assets to provide a $3 billion loan to Ukraine, calling such a move 'treacherous' and amounting to complicity in theft.

Kyiv pummeled

Overnight Russian attacks on Kyiv killed at least eight people, wounded more than 70 and smashed buildings in the biggest attack on the Ukrainian capital this year.

The attack set off fires and six children were among the wounded, with some people still trapped under rubble, officials said.

Russia said the strikes were targeted at Ukraine's defense industry, including plants that produced "rocket fuel and gunpowder".

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that the "brutal strikes" showed that Russia, not Ukraine, was the obstacle to peace. 

"Overnight, the Russian armed forces carried out a massive strike with long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, and drones, on Ukraine's aviation, aerospace, machine-building and armored vehicle industries," Russia's defense ministry said. "The objectives of the strike have been achieved."

Rescue teams were operating at 13 sites in Kyiv with climbing specialists and sniffer dogs, the emergency services said. Forty fires had broken out.

Russia launched 145 drones and 70 missiles, including 11 ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack, Ukraine's air force said. Air force units shot down 112 targets.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that apart from Kyiv and the surrounding region, seven other regions were under "mass" attack.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second biggest city, endured overnight waves of Russian missiles and drones, mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.

The attacks showed Moscow was blocking peace efforts, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

"While claiming to seek peace, Russia launched a deadly airstrike on Kyiv. This isn't a pursuit of peace, it's a mockery of it," Kallas said. "The real obstacle is not Ukraine but Russia, whose war aims have not changed."

Peace talks bickering continues

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have clashed again, with the U.S. leader chiding Zelenskyy for refusing to recognize Russia's occupation of Crimea.

Trump's Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to a U.S. peace proposal "or for the United States to walk away from this process."

Speaking to reporters in India, Vance said the proposal called for freezing territorial lines "at some level close to where they are today" and a "long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace."

"The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing," he said.

A former Western official familiar with the U.S. proposal said it also called for the recognition of Russia's claims to Crimea.

Zelenskyy on Tuesday reiterated that Ukraine would never cede Crimea to Russia, which seized control of the peninsula in 2014 in a move that was condemned internationally. "There's nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution," he said.

Trump, who argued with Zelenskyy in a disastrous Oval Office meeting in March, called this an inflammatory statement that made peace harder to achieve. 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled his trip to attend this week's London peace talks, prompting cancellation of a broader meeting with foreign ministers from Ukraine, Britain, France and Germany and underscoring the gaps between Washington, Kyiv and its European allies over how to end the conflict.

Several sources have said proposals from Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff include not only recognizing Russia's claims to Crimea, but accepting Russia's control of the 20 percent of Ukraine's territory it has gained in the conflict, ruling out Ukrainian membership of NATO and lifting of Western sanctions.

The Kremlin said it agreed with U.S. President Donald Trump who said on social media that Ukraine had "lost years ago" the Crimean peninsula secured by Russia in 2014.

"This completely corresponds with our understanding, which we have been saying for a long time," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.