Russian Strike Hits Ukraine's Academy of Sciences in Downtown Kyiv as Attacks Kill Seven
More than 50 people were wounded across Ukraine as the Kremlin said Kyiv 'will have to pay a price,' days after peace talk efforts at the United Nations.
Russia pounded Ukraine around the clock into Monday, killing at least seven people, wounding more than 50 and striking a building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in downtown Kyiv in a brazen daytime attack.
A woman was killed in the strike on Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district Monday afternoon, the city military administration said. The academy is the latest cultural landmark in the capital to be damaged. Russian forces also hit a pharmaceutical company, gas stations and office buildings in Kyiv. CBS News correspondent Aidan Stretch had to take cover from more incoming Russian weapons soon after arriving at the academy. Across the wider Kyiv region, Russian drones killed four people and wounded eight.
Elsewhere, a drone slammed into an office center in central Dnipro during working hours, killing three people and wounding at least 12. In Kharkiv, a Russian strike on a nine-story apartment building wounded 43 people, 11 of them children, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Four people, including two teenage girls, were hurt Sunday evening in the northern Chernihiv region. Russia's Defense Ministry said it hit two data centers and gas stations in Kyiv, a Nova Poshta postal hub in Odesa, and two cargo ships, one in the Black Sea and one in the port of Chornomorsk. Those strikes aim to choke Ukraine's grain exports and could cause food shortages in countries that rely on them. Moscow insists it targets only military sites.
The barrage followed a week of diplomacy at the United Nations aimed at restarting talks to end the full-scale invasion, now 4 1/2 years old. The Kremlin signaled Monday that quick progress is unlikely. "Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "That is happening right now." He pointed to recent Ukrainian attacks, including during Russia's parliamentary elections. On Saturday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the U.N. General Assembly that "Europe is doing everything it can to thwart peace talks in which the Trump administration is interested."
On the ground, the front has barely moved since last year, largely because swarms of drones make troop movements deadly. But Ukraine's Third Army Corps said Monday its offensive, code-named Operation Vivaldi, had retaken another 20 square miles in the Donetsk region, for a total of 68 square miles since it began several months ago. The corps said it turned Soviet-era BTR-60 armored personnel carriers into kamikaze vehicles to blow up the strongest Russian fortifications, and used ground robots to attack Russian positions. Russia made no immediate comment, but its Defense Ministry claimed the capture of Novovodiane in Donetsk and Ulanove in the Sumy region.
Ukraine kept striking back. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said long-range attacks hit two defense plants in the Tula and Voronezh regions and oil facilities in Krasnodar. Local officials in Krasnodar reported fires at three infrastructure sites overnight, and Russia's Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 254 Ukrainian drones.
