Deadly Russian strikes hit Kyiv on eve of Trump trip to NATO summit

Russia’s aerial attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.

“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, said on Telegram.

A residential building in the Podilskyi district partly collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.

The lights went out, the smell of burning filled the air, and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.

“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”

Halina Ivanivna, 61, of Kyiv, said she awoke to the sound of the first strike around 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began to collapse around her.

“Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.

About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.

An NBC News producer in Kyiv saw a vast column of thick smoke rising into the sky from her window Monday morning. There were no cars on the streets or sounds of the city, she said, noting a stream of reports from local authorities confirming death and destruction.