Russia launches missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian capital, hours after prisoner swap begins

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv came under a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack overnight into Saturday, just hours after Russia and Ukraine began a major prisoner exchange.

At least 15 people were injured across multiple districts in the city, according to Ukraine’s National Police said on Telegram.

The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack triggered fires and left debris strewn throughout the city. Multiple residential buildings were damaged, officials said.

Explosions and loud sirens could be heard blaring across the capital in video shared by Reuters news agency. Several fires could be seen against the nighttime skyline.

The nighttime attack came after Russia and Ukraine completed the first phase of what is expected to be the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.

The swap started on Friday and will continue on Saturday and Sunday, with Kyiv and Moscow expected to swap 2,000 people – 1,000 from each side.

The agreement to release 1,000 prisoners on each side was the only significant outcome of the meeting between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul last week, which marked the first time the two sides have met directly since soon after Russia’s full-scale unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

An explosion lights up the sky over Kyiv.

A resident looks at a fragment of a Russian drone, at a residential building that was damaged in the attack.

The Kyiv city military administration said Saturday that shell fragments damaged an apartment building in Dniprovskyi district.

Officials also said a fire broke out across four floors of an apartment high-rise in Obolon district, in the city’s northern suburbs, with many windows destroyed, the city administration said.

Fallen debris was also reported at a shopping center in the same area, the city administration said, and drone fragments hit the ground in a number of other widely separated neighborhoods.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Saturday that Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 attack drones on the country, with the “main focus” being the capital. It said air defenses shot down 6 of those missiles and 245 of the drones, with projectiles also hitting the Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

“It was a difficult night for all of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram, expressing his condolences to families and loved ones of the injured.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that the country’s air defense worked “non-stop” to repel Russian air attacks overnight.

“One week has passed since the Istanbul meeting, and Russia has yet to send its ‘peace memorandum.’ Instead, Russia sends deadly drones and missiles at civilians,” he said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry claimed it destroyed 94 Ukrainian UAVs over Russian territory, mostly over the Belgorod and Bryansk regions. Some UAVs were also shot down over the Kursk, Lipetsk, Voronezh and Tula regions too, it added.

A firefighter works on the site of a residential building damaged in the attack.

The Istanbul meeting was initially proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to a ceasefire-or-sanctions ultimatum given to Moscow by Kyiv’s European allies – which many saw as a clear attempt by the Kremlin leader to distract and delay.

Ukraine and its allies demanded that Russia agree to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Istanbul, but that did not happen.

Neither Zelensky nor Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the talks in Istanbul.

This story has been updated.

CNN’s Ivana Kottasová, Victoria Butenko, Svitlana Vlasova and Eve Brennan contributed to this report.