Kyiv under siege, Zelenskyy seeks G7 support, Russia backs Trump call

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine on Tuesday, hitting dozens of civilian targets in Kyiv including a large apartment block, killing at least 15 people and wounding scores, Ukrainian officials said.

At the same time, Russia's Defense Ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 147 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, including the Moscow region, overnight.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian forces fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine. He described the destruction in Kyiv as among the "most horrific" seen in the Ukrainian capital during the conflict.

About 27 locations in the capital were hit during several waves of attacks throughout the night, and residential buildings, educational institutions, and critical infrastructure facilities were damaged, officials said.

A ballistic missile struck a nine-story residential building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district, wiping out a whole section of it, which was flattened into a pile of debris.

Emergency workers were combing through the rubble and dousing the flames with hoses. They used a crane to lower a wounded elderly woman in a stretcher out of the window of a flat in an adjacent section of the building.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 14 people were killed in Kyiv and one more in Odesa in southern Ukraine. Nearly a hundred people were injured in the capital and the nearby region, Odesa, and Chernihiv in the north, officials said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the dead in the capital included a 62-year-old U.S. citizen, who died from shrapnel wounds.

Ukraine has also launched drones deep into Russia, although its attacks have not caused similar damage to civilian targets. 

Ukraine's G7 bid

Zelenskyy was in Canada to attend the Group of Seven summit, hoping to gather more support for tighter sanctions against Russia and continued military aid for Ukraine.

He had also hoped to meet U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss weapons purchases, but Trump left the G7 summit a day early due to the situation in the Middle East, the White House said.

At the summit, Trump called for the G7 to readmit Russia, which was expelled in 2014 after an earlier attack on Ukraine.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Trump was right to assert that it had been a big mistake to expel Russia from the Group of Eight in 2014, but that the G7 was no longer significant for Russia and looked "rather useless" now.

UK issues sanctions

The UK on Tuesday announced further sanctions against Russia in what Prime Minister Keir Starmer will describe as part of a coordinated move by the Group of Seven (G7) countries.

A notice posted on the government website said Britain's latest sanctions targeted four individuals, six entities and 20 ships, including oil tankers, marine-related companies, and suppliers of goods to Russia - particularly electronics.

Starmer is expected to set out details of the sanctions later on Tuesday from a G7 summit in Canada.

He will say he wants "to work with all of our G7 partners to squeeze Russia's energy revenues and reduce the funds they are able to pour into their illegal war," according to advance excerpts of his remarks released by his office.

Britain has already sanctioned over 2,300 individuals, entities and ships as part of sanctions against Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin on Tuesday, asked if Russia planned to assess Ukrainian proposals for a ceasefire and hold new talks, said there was no understanding of when the next direct negotiations with Kyiv would occur.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had fulfilled all its obligations agreed to in previous talks held in Istanbul on June 2. Russia would assess in the coming days the possible timeframe for continuing negotiations, he said.