Russia bombards Kyiv after rejecting peacekeeping plan

KYIV:

Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine's capital, setting apartment blocks alight and killing at least four people, Kyiv's police said Friday after Moscow rejected the latest post-war peacekeeping plan.

Ukraine and its Western allies, scrambling to bring an end to the war as it approaches the four-year mark, agreed this week that Europe would deploy troops after any ceasefire.

But Moscow, which says it launched its February 2022 invasion in part to prevent an expansion of the NATO defence treaty, has repeatedly rejected the idea of any Western forces stationed in Ukraine.

Such troops would be "considered legitimate military targets", Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Thursday, branding Ukraine and its American and European allies an "axis of war".

As diplomats wrangle for a breakthrough in what has been Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II, Russia has continued to press forward with its assault, bombarding Ukraine daily.

In Kyiv, drone strikes across the city killed four people and wounded at least 24 others, including emergency rescuers, police said.

At a residential building on the city's left bank, a medic was killed while responding to a strike as the site was hit a second time.

Some neighbourhoods were plunged into darkness during what Mayor Vitali Klitschko described as a "massive enemy missile attack".

Across the border in Russia's Belgorod, the governor said more than half a million people were without power or heating after a Ukrainian attack targeted the region's utilities. AFP