U.S. President Donald Trump blamed Kiev yesterday, Friday, for the Russian hammering of Ukraine in the early hours of Friday morning, killing at least six people and injuring more than eighty others.

“They gave Putin a reason to come in and ruthlessly bomb them last night” (Thursday night into Friday), Trump told reporters accompanying him on the presidential aircraft (Air Force One) when asked about the impact of the barrage of drone strikes launched by Ukraine against military airfields in Russia.

The Russian strikes followed Moscow’s warning of retaliation for recent Ukrainian drone strikes that destroyed strategic bombers on Russian territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zhelensky said in a video message that three rescuers were killed during the bombings in Kyiv: “Those killed in Kyiv were rescuers who had rushed to the site of an earlier attack and unfortunately met their deaths due to a subsequent Russian strike.” Two deaths were reported in the town of Chernihiv (north) and one in the city of Lutsk (northwest), near the border with Poland.

Ukrainian diplomatic chief Andriy Shibiha wrote in a post on Platform X that Russia had responded to the destruction of its aircraft with “attacks on civilians in Ukraine… Multi-storey buildings were hit. Energy infrastructure was damaged.”

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said Russian forces launched raids against military targets in retaliation for Ukrainian “terrorist acts” in Russia