One killed in attack that reportedly used Kinzhal and Iskander missiles against the Ukrainian capital

One person was reported killed on Friday in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where AFP staff saw smoke rise over parts of the city after a series of explosions.

“According to preliminary reports, one person was killed,” the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Popko, said on Telegram.

Attacks overnight also hit the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih, badly damaging a two-storey building and injuring six people, according to officials. A man and a teenage girl had been pulled from the rubble and had been hospitalised, the region’s governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Putin’s comments about testing a new hypersonic missile above Kyiv “to see what happens”. Zelenskyy said: “Do you think that’s a sane person? Simply scumbags.”

Russia has been accused of carrying out a mass cyber-attack on Ukraine’s state registries. Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said on Facebook late on Thursday: “As a result of this targeted attack, the work of the unified and state registries, which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, was temporarily suspended.” Stefanishyna said it was clear the attack was “carried out by the Russians to disrupt the work of the country’s critically important infrastructure”. Russia did not immediately comment on the claim.

Vladimir Putin has said he was ready to meet Donald Trump and discuss peace proposals as he used a marathon phone-in event to claim that the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger”. The Russian president said during the annual event that Moscow was “ready for negotiations and compromises” to end the fighting, but later he pointed to a maximalist position that would involve keeping Crimea and other occupied territories, Ukraine not joining Nato, and the lifting of sanctions by the west. He also denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing.

Zelenskyy said Putin was a fantasiser and accused him of wanting to destroy Ukraine’s army. “He (Putin) is an old fantasiser. He lives in a different world. He lives in his own aquarium I am afraid.”

Zelenskyy said he needed both Europe and the United States on board to secure a durable peace, as he huddled with EU leaders at their final summit before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I believe that the European guarantees won’t be sufficient for Ukraine,” he said after talks with his EU counterparts.