Russia pounds Kyiv one day after visit by Witkoff and Kushner

By Lex Harvey, Victoria Butenko and Svitlana Vlasova, CNN

Kyiv (CNN) — Russia pounded Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with ballistic missiles on Tuesday morning, one day after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited the region in an attempt to kickstart stalled peace talks.

Explosions rang out in the city early Tuesday local time, according to a CNN reporter in Kyiv, in a signal the agreed three day-halt on attacks as Washington’s emissaries visited on both country’s capitals was over.

Ukrainian officials said the combined attack involved ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones.

Six people were wounded as a result of the attack, which also damaged residential buildings, according to Kyiv officials.

Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko had earlier said people had been trapped inside a residential building, and that the attacks had sparked fires across the city, including at an educational institution.

Due to the scale of the Russian attack, military aircraft were put in the air by neighboring Poland to protect its airspace, the Reuters news agency reported, citing the country’s armed forces.

On Sunday, Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, met with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, one day after holding intensive meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as Washington renews its push to end the years-long war.

“Substantive progress was made, including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks,” Witkoff said on X following the talks, though no major breakthroughs were announced.

Russia and Ukraine had agreed to pause attacks on each other’s capitals for the duration of the weekend of diplomacy, which came after months without significant progress toward resolution. The 72-hour truce expired on Tuesday.

The reprieve came after weeks of intense Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital, including a daytime strike on the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service on Friday –– the first time the building had been hit during the conflict.

That strike was seen as a major escalation, and a sign that Kyiv is increasingly unable to defend its key assets against Russian attacks as it struggles with critical shortages of interceptor missiles.

Ukraine has also ramped up its aerial attacks in recent months, striking targets deeper into Russian territory.

On Tuesday morning, the governor of the Russian city of Saratov said a Ukrainian drone attack hit civilian infrastructure in the city and wounded some people in a message on Telegram, Reuters reported.

This is a developing story. More to come.

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