Smoke rises over the government headquarters in Kyiv, following Russian drone and missile strikes. As well as being the largest of the war, the air raid was the seventh since June involving more than 400 drones. Photo / Genya Savilov, AFP
For the first time during the war, Russian forces have struck a governmental building in the centre of Kyiv.
Plumes of smoke could be seen rising above the capital’s skyline from the offices of the Ukrainian government after a pre-dawn missile and drone barrage was unleashed across the country.
It was also the largest mass aerial bombardment of the full-scale invasion, with Russia firing more than 800 drones and a dozen missiles.
The air raid will do little to convince the world that President Vladimir Putin is serious about ending his three-year invasion of Ukraine.
Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, called the hit “a serious escalation”.
“For the first time since the beginning of full-scale war, Russia damaged the Ukrainian government building in Kyiv. This alone is a serious escalation,” he wrote on social media.
Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s Prime Minister, whose office resides in the building, said its “roof and upper floors” had been damaged.
Time will tell whether Russia deliberately targeted the office block, which is situated not far where Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s President, usually resides in the capital.
Debris from an intercepted drone, of which there were said to be 747, could be to blame for the strike.
A drone being knocked off its intended course by electronic warfare jammers could be another plausible explanation as to why the governmental building was hit.
Some analysts argue that it makes little sense for Russia to begin attempting to strike at the heart of the Ukrainian Government at this stage of the war.
Climbing the escalatory ladder will do little to convince United States President Donald Trump that Putin is serious about ending the war.
The Telegraph has previously reported that the US President moved to supply Ukraine with air-defence missiles after a similar strike on the Polish consulate in Kyiv because he feared such an attack could lead to escalation.
And then there is the question over whether Russia really wants to invite tit-for-tat Ukrainian drone strikes on governmental buildings in Moscow at a time when air defence is scarce on both sides of the conflict.
There is a possibility Ukraine could respond in kind if Zelenskyy and his military chiefs deem Moscow’s latest assault to be deliberate.
Other war-watchers say that the strike could have been a deliberate and calibrated part of Putin’s grand strategy.
“I don’t think it was accidental,” John Foreman, a former British defence attache in Moscow and Kyiv, said.
“More to send a message that Russia has the upper hand and can keep escalating.”
For Foreman, Putin’s forces have frequently climbed up and down the escalatory ladder as part of “deterrence thinking” to dampen Ukrainian counter strikes and Western resolve, as well as signalling Moscow’s military supremacy.
But it isn’t only the strike on the government building that should be viewed as an escalation.
As well as being the largest of the war, the air raid was the seventh since June involving more than 400 drones.
This tactic of increasingly large barrages of drones and missiles have sapped Ukraine’s already dwindling stockpiles of air-defence interceptors.
Moscow has also started targeting energy infrastructure ahead of the winter months in the hope of crippling the electricity grid ahead of the freezing weather.
This view would fit in with a recent speech by Putin, which he used to reject the legitimacy of Zelenskyy and claim it impossible to broker a peace deal with the current Ukrainian Government.
“I have said many times that I am ready for these contacts,” the Russian President claimed, in what should be seen as a direct response to Trump’s attempt to set up a trilateral meeting with the warring leaders.
“I don’t see much point in them because it will be practically impossible to reach an agreement with the Ukrainian side on key issues: even if there is political will, which I doubt, there are legal and technical difficulties,” added Putin.
During his speech to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in Russia’s far east, Putin incorrectly claimed Kyiv could not conclude a peace deal before lifting martial law and holding presidential elections and a national election to ratify any accord.
The US-based Institute of the Study of War said it “has long assessed that Putin is not interested in meaningful negotiations to end the war and instead sought to delay or prolong negotiations, and his September 5 statements are now attempting to justify Russia’s refusal to negotiate at all”.
Ukraine will attempt to use this speech and the latest drone raid, including the governmental building strike, to convince Trump that Putin is the current impediment to the US President’s peace efforts.
Sybiha said Russia’s intensified attacks at the same time as refusing US-urged peace talks was the “greatest cynicism”.
The White House was said to have grown increasingly pessimistic about the chances of brokering an end to the war in recent days, according to anonymous sources, cited by NBC News.
The ambitions of Mr Zelenskyy and his Western backers in the Anglo-French coalition of the willing is to turn those frustrations into direct support for Kyiv.
“The world can force the Kremlin criminals to stop the killings – all that is needed is political will,” the Ukrainian President wrote online after the latest attacks.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the strikes demonstrate that Putin believes he can act with “impunity” and “he is not serious about peace”.
Emmanuel Macron, French President, said: “Together with Ukraine and our partners, we stand for peace.
“Russia, meanwhile, is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of war and terror.”
As well as pressuring Trump to act against Russia, Ukraine is using the latest attack to also urge Europe to cut Moscow’s fossil-fuel revenues.
The US President has hinted he will impose sanctions on Russia oil exports.
However, he is unlikely to move until the European Union does so first, which will prove problematic for Brussels given Hungary’s and Slovakia’s refusal to cut orders from Russia.
“The Russian war machine runs on oil and gas revenues,” Sybiha said, who spent the morning contacting European counterparts.
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