"There is no other option - no one in Ukraine can be allowed to live."

Shortly after midnight, explosions tear the sky over Kyiv. Drones loaded with explosives penetrate the Ukrainian capital from all directions, followed by a relentless salvo of deadly rockets. Blazing tracer fire pierces the darkness as anti-aircraft guns desperately try to intercept the deadly payload. Yet even the heroic efforts of the air defense cannot prevent Kyiv from going up in flames. As morning breaks, a scene of devastation emerges, a panorama of human tragedies and shattered hopes. At least 16 people lose their lives in this night of horror, including a six-year-old child. Another 159 are injured, many of them seriously. Rescue workers fight their way through smoking piles of rubble, retrieving survivors and the dead, while desperate relatives search for their loved ones amid the ruins. Ihor Klymenko, the Ukrainian interior minister, accompanies a dramatic rescue operation in which helpers spend hours cutting free a man whose head they have carefully extracted from the debris. His fate remains uncertain, the tension at the disaster site palpable.

This attack, one of the most brutal since the beginning of the Russian invasion, comes immediately after an unequivocal threat from U.S. President Donald Trump. Just days earlier, Trump had threatened Moscow with sharp new sanctions if Russia did not stop its bloody offensive within ten days. But President Vladimir Putin reacts coolly, calling the expectations of the international community "excessive" and declaring that peace cannot be negotiated on the public stage but only through quiet diplomacy.

In the Ukrainian capital, five rockets and 21 drones hit their targets directly. Twelve districts suffer devastating damage. A nine-story residential building in the center is hit particularly hard. Rescuers carry injured residents from the smoking ruins, including a young mother in pajamas and her small son, both visibly traumatized. Mayor Vitali Klitschko appears shaken: "Never since the beginning of the war have so many children been injured in a single night as today."

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Air Force reports a total of 309 drones and eight rockets descending on Kyiv and other cities. In Kramatorsk, another person dies, and eleven are injured. President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers dramatic appeals to the international community, urging the West to use all available means to force Moscow to peace. Russia's response is frighteningly clear: shortly before the attack, the Russian state agency RIA Novosti headlined, "There is no other option - no one in Ukraine can be allowed to live." This statement, cynical and brutal at the same time, makes it terrifyingly clear that Moscow has no interest in compromise.

Trump's reaction to the massacre is unusually sharp: he calls Russia's actions "despicable" and announces retaliation. At the center of his threats are economic sanctions against countries that continue to buy Russian oil - above all India and China. A 25 percent punitive tariff measure against India already announced serves as a warning signal to other nations still hesitating to turn away from Moscow. But Putin's response is escalatory. While he pretends to hold talks, he is already planning the deployment of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles in Belarus, right on NATO's border. The Russian military positions for this are expected to be completed later this year, according to the Kremlin leader.

Meanwhile, civilians like Nina Holubieva despair in the city of Sumy, which has been under bombardment for months near the Russian border. In a women's shelter, originally a refuge from domestic violence, she and other women with their children find makeshift protection from the violence outside and inside. Holubieva recently gave birth to her second son there - in the middle of the war, in a basement hospital. She struggles with existential fears, and the formula for her newborn has to be paid for out of the staff's own pockets.

Such personal fates illustrate the full extent of the catastrophe in which Ukraine finds itself. While verbal battles for peace are waged on the diplomatic stage, people die, families lose their homes, and entire generations grow up traumatized in basements and bunkers. The world watches, and the shadow of an even worse escalation looms ever more clearly on the horizon.

Investigative journalism requires courage, conviction – and your support.