Russia attacked Ukraine on Sunday with the largest drone assault so far in the war, the authorities said, killing at least five people around the country and breaching air defences in the heavily guarded government district of the capital.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched 805 Iranian-designed Shahed exploding drones and decoys across the country, the latest in a relentless offensive that has continued unabated despite the Trump administration’s efforts to mediate peace talks. Russia also fired 17 cruise and ballistic missiles in the volley, according to the air force, which said nine missiles and nearly 60 drones had evaded air defences and made impact.

A woman and her child were killed in the capital, Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian authorities. And smoke billowed from the large, collonaded building where the cabinet of ministers convenes — a landmark in the city.

“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on social media. “It has been repeatedly said in Washington that sanctions will follow a refusal to talk.”

Officials said that Sunday was the first time since the war began in February 2022 that Russia had damaged a Ukrainian government building in Kyiv.

Rising on a hill and crisscrossed by leafy, cobblestone streets, the Kyiv government district lies at the centre of rings of air defences and is seen as the best-protected area in the country. The cabinet building is near Parliament and Zelensky’s office.

But early on Sunday, flames leapt from the windows of two upper floors of the cabinet building and firefighters flew in a helicopter to douse the blaze. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, whose offices are in the building, later posted pictures of the aftermath showing a charred corridor, broken doors and dangling electrical wires.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said that falling debris from a drone shot down by air-defence systems appeared to have started the fire.

Other cities around the country — including Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Odesa — also came under attack. One person was killed and 17 others were injured in Zaporizhzhia, while deaths were also reported in Sumy and Chernihiv, according to the local authorities. Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in south-central Ukraine, and Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea, both sustained damage. In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a bridge over the Dnipro River, halting traffic.

Russia has ramped up its drone attacks since last fall, setting new records nearly every month for the number of weapons launched. Before Sunday’s assault, the largest attack was on July 9, when Russia launched 728 drones.

New York Times News Service