14 Killed as Russia Intensifies Daytime Strikes

Russian strikes killed at least 14 people across Ukraine on Friday, officials said, as Moscow launched another wave of heavy daytime attacks in an apparent escalation of its aerial campaign.

Although Russia has bombarded Ukraine throughout the more than four-year war, most large-scale assaults have taken place at night. In recent weeks, however, Kyiv says Moscow has increasingly shifted to daytime barrages.

According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles in Friday’s assault.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of intensifying attacks ahead of Catholic Easter on Sunday, saying Russia had turned “what should have been silence in the skies into an Easter escalation”.

Images released by emergency services showed heavily damaged residential buildings, including a torn-open apartment block and debris scattered across streets.

In the Kyiv region, one person was killed and eight others injured, regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. He added that around 20 animals also died after a veterinary clinic was damaged in the attack.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said a drone hit a residential building in Obukhiv, while another strike landed between a kindergarten and a school in Vyshneve, damaging nearby homes.

Elsewhere, three people were killed in the northern Sumy region, while separate attacks in the northwestern Zhytomyr and central Dnipropetrovsk regions left two more dead, according to local authorities.

Officials also reported eight deaths in frontline regions including Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

The attacks triggered emergency power outages in several regions, electricity operator Ukrenergo said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said the strikes reflected Moscow’s response to Kyiv’s call for an Easter ceasefire.

Zelensky had earlier said Ukraine was ready for a holiday truce, but the Kremlin said it had not received any clearly formulated proposal.

Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of dragging out the war to seize more territory and says Moscow remains uninterested in peace. Russia, meanwhile, denies deliberately targeting civilians.

Efforts to revive peace talks have also slowed amid wider global tensions. Zelensky said he had invited a US delegation to Kyiv in an attempt to restart negotiations with Moscow.

US President Donald Trump’s envoys have been involved in shuttle diplomacy between Kyiv and Moscow, but progress has remained limited.