Children among dead in Russian airstrikes, hours after Trump-Putin talks shelved

At least seven people have been killed including two children during intense Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, says President Volodymyr Zelensky.

A kindergarten was hit in Ukraine’s second biggest city Kharkiv and there was widespread damage in Kyiv, in a series of attacks that Zelensky said proved Moscow had not come under enough pressure for its continued war. At least 26 people including children are reported hurt.

Hours earlier, US President Donald Trump said his plans for an imminent summit in Budapest with Russia’s Vladimir Putin had been shelved as he did not want a “wasted meeting”.

The Kremlin has rejected calls for a ceasefire along the current front lines made both by Trump and European leaders.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said it had attacked a Russian chemical plant in the Bryansk border region late on Tuesday with UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

Calling the strike “a successful hit” that penetrated the Russian air defence system, military officials said the Bryansk plant “produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine”.

Zelensky, who was due to visit Swedish defence contractor Saab on Wednesday, returned from talks with Trump last Friday, having failed to persuade the US president to provide long-range Tomahawk missiles.

“As soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further away for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian capital came under a wave of attacks overnight, the first such strikes since 28 September.

A couple in their 60s were killed when a drone hit their high-rise building in the city, and four people were killed in the wider Kyiv region. Among the victims were a woman, a six-month-old baby and a girl aged 12.

The mayor of Kharkiv said later that a 40-year-old man was killed and five other people were hurt in a series of drone attacks. A private kindergarten was hit and children were among the wounded, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

The capital was under a ballistic missile warning for most of the night, and echoed to the sound of explosions. By morning rescue teams fought fires in residential buildings.

Across Ukraine, Russian attacks once again targeted energy infrastructure and emergency power outages were imposed in several areas.

One MP in Kyiv, Inna Sovsun, told the BBC that the air raids had lasted throughout the night and were definitely an attack on the power supply: “for the majority like myself it means we don’t have electricity and we don’t have water.”