Moscow sent 70 missiles and 145 drones toward Ukraine, mainly targeting Kyiv, in an attack that leader Volodymyr Zelensky said was aimed at pressuring the United States.

“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

At least 12 people died in the strikes with 90 injured, according to Ukraine’s emergency services, and more casualties may be trapped under rubble. The emergency services said Moscow’s assault struck 13 locations in Kyiv, including residential buildings and civilian infrastructure.

It was the costliest attack on the city since July 2024, when 33 people were killed in an aerial barrage that targeted a hospital and residential districts.

Zelensky said during a trip to South Africa that the bombardment was “first and foremost” aimed at “pressuring the US.” He sought to push back against Trump’s efforts to corral Kyiv into making concessions, telling reporters: “The fact that Ukraine is ready to sit down at a negotiating table after (a) full ceasefire with terrorists… is a big compromise.”

Trump posted on Wednesday that he is "not happy" with Russia's attacks. 

And Zelensky, who was speaking to reporters shortly before Trump’s social media post, sought to highlight imbalances in the administration’s stances towards Kyiv and Moscow.

“This is (an issue of) our survival. We are very direct and transparent in this matter,” Zelensky said. “I don’t see strong pressure against Russia and new strong sanctions packages against the Russian aggression for now.”

The Ukrainian leader said Moscow’s latest attack was “one of the most complex, most daring attacks coming from Russia.” Russia’s defense ministry said it carried out “a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles on enterprises of the aviation, missile and space, mechanical engineering and armored industries of Ukraine, production of rocket fuel and gunpowder.”

“The strike objectives were achieved. All targets were hit,” Moscow said.

A search and rescue operation is underway to find people caught under rubble, according to Ukrainian local and national authorities.

Following the attacks on Kyiv, Zelensky announced he was cutting short his visit to South Africa, where he landed late on Wednesday, to return to Ukraine.

“It is extremely important that everyone around the world sees and understands what is really happening” he said, adding that Ukraine would immediately contact its international partners regarding its requests to strengthen air defenses.

‘The first thing I felt was fear’

Air raid sirens blasted through Kyiv for six hours in the early hours of Thursday, as the Russian barrage gripped the city in fear. A CNN producer said they waited in a corridor with their child as missiles rained on the city, with a drone flying audibly outside their window.

Sirens are a near daily occurrence in Kyiv, but Thursday’s strikes served as an unwelcome reminder of the anxiety that pulsed through the capital in the early phases of the war. Images provided by the emergency services showed buildings engulfed in flames at some of the sites struck in the attacks.

“The first thing I felt was fear,” Iryna Dzen, a resident of an affected neighbourhood, told CNN on Wednesday. “You don’t understand anything when you wake up at night from an explosion. You are alive, but your parents, children, you don’t know if they are alive, where was the hit.”

“We went to the corridor, it was safer there, and started calling our relatives (to find out) whether they were alive or not,” she said. “And when we came (outside) and saw everything, it was a horror.”

Rescue workers search for people under rubble of an apartment building destroyed in the barrage. 

Engineers, rescue workers and recovery dogs were searching on Wednesday for people believed to be trapped under the rubble of a home destroyed by the strikes in the Sviatoshyn district, said Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

A man aged 21, and his 19-year-old sister, were among those who died, according to Zelensky.

The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko earlier urged people to take shelter. The Kyiv city military administration has since broadcast an all-clear message.

“Rescuers are doing everything they can to clear the rubble as quickly as possible,” the mayor said on Telegram. “We are currently clearing the rubble manually, we are not using any equipment because there may still be people under the rubble.”

An injured woman sits with her dog near a house destroyed by a Russian airstrike. 

Klymenko said eight regions of the country were targeted in what he called “a massive combined Russian attack” that also hit Zhytomyr, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Poltava, Khmelnytsky, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia.

The Russian attacks followed a fresh public spat between Trump and Zelensky, specifically over the future of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

As part of its mission to seal a peace deal to end the three-year war, the US administration has proposed recognizing Russian control of Crimea, officials familiar with the details have told CNN.

Such a move would reverse a decade of US policy and could upset the widely held post-World War II consensus that international borders should not be changed by force.

Zelensky has repeatedly said Ukraine would not accept that, saying it would go against the country’s constitution. On Wednesday, Trump said Zelensky’s position was “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in South Africa on Wednesday hours after US President Donald Trump accused him of harming peace talks. 

“It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Earlier on Tuesday Vice President JD Vance threatened to abandon negotiations, telling reporters during a visit to India that a “very explicit proposal” had been put to both Russia and Ukraine and that it was “time for them to either say ‘yes,’ or for the US to walk away.”