600,000 without power in Ukraine as Russia launches ‘massive’ attack amid Trump’s ‘energy ceasefire’
ABC News
LONDON — At least 600,000 people were without power early Wednesday in Ukraine, after Russia launched an aerial attack that struck energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“A targeted Russian ballistic missile strike specifically against energy infrastructure — the very infrastructure covered by the ceasefire announced by the American President,” the Ukrainian president said on social media.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that both sides had agreed to an “energy ceasefire.”
The outages on Wednesday may become more widespread, the president said, as there is “significant” damage to at least 26 power facilities and four others in the gas and oil sector.
The attack included some 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones, officials said, with many targeted Kyiv and its surrounding area.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in it carried out a “massive strike by ground-launched high-precision weapons and long-range drones against communication and energy infrastructure facilities” in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Katarina Mathernova, the European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine, said more than a dozen explosions were heard before dawn in the Kyiv.
“A nine-storey apartment building was hit in the capital. Fire spread through people’s homes,” Mathernova said early on Wednesday. “Rescuers helped residents down ladders while others stood outside, watching their building burn.”
Mathernova and Ukrainian officials said an early warning system, which detects aerial attacks and allows for better defense, appeared to not have worked for a second night in a row.
“That missing warning means missing time,” Mathernova said. “Time to wake a child. To get downstairs. To reach a shelter.”
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, described the overnight strike on Kyiv as “massive,” saying at least one person had been killed in the capital.
Ukrainian also struck Russian military overnight, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, which said it targeted sites that Russia was known to use to launch drones.
“In the area of Donetsk, a site used by the enemy for the storage, preparation and launch of attack UAVs was hit,” Ukraine said. “Systematic strikes against such sites are aimed at reducing the russian aggressor’s ability to strike civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.”
A policeman stands guard as smoke and flames rise from the building adjacent to the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra after a large scale attack overnight on June 15, 2026 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Russian drones and missiles targeted Kyiv in a major attack on Sunday night, Ukrainian officials said on Monday morning, killing several people in the capital and setting a fire at a historic cathedral and UNESCO world heritage site.
At least five people were killed and 28 people injured by the strikes on Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in posts to social media.
Zelenskyy said that Russia launched more than 60 missiles at the capital.
The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, an 11th-century cathedral located in the heart of the city, was among the sites damaged in the attack, Zelenskyy wrote.
The roof of the church was set on fire by strikes, he reported, though said that emergency responders extinguished the blaze. “This is one of the biggest Russian crimes against Christian culture to date,” the Ukrainian leader added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the attack as “barbaric” in a post to X. He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has forever put his name on the list of history’s worst barbarians.”
In total, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 70 missiles and 611 drones into Ukraine overnight, of which 50 missiles and 582 drones were shot down or otherwise suppressed. Twenty ballistic missiles and 27 drones impacted across 42 locations, the air force said in a post to Telegram.
Sunday night’s attack was the largest combined Russian strike recorded since the night of June 1, according to Ukrainian air force data analyzed by ABC News.
Zelenskyy said that at least five more people were killed and nine people injured by Russian strikes In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, while other attacks were also reported in the Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy and Mykolaiv regions.
“Russia is showing the world its intentions to continue the war,” Zelenskyy wrote. “It is very important that there be a response from the G7 countries, which are currently gathering for a summit, and that it be decisive and meaningful: more pressure on the aggressor, more help for Ukraine with air defense, especially with anti-ballistic missiles.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry described the overnight attacks as “a massive strike with high-precision weapons” in a post to Telegram. The ministry claimed that its targets included “objects of the defense-industrial complex” and military facilities in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro.
The ministry denied responsibility for the strike on the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, claiming — without providing evidence — that the cathedral was hit by an interceptor missile fired by a Ukrainian-operated U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system.
The latest Russian attack came as leaders of the G7 — a grouping made up of the U.S., France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K. — prepared to gather for the bloc’s annual summit, which this year is being held in France.
Zelenskyy is expected to attend the event as a guest and meet with President Donald Trump and European leaders. While touring the damaged cathedral on Monday afternoon, the Ukrainian president said he invited Putin for talks at the summit. Moscow has not yet commented on the invitation.
The Russian Defense Ministry also claimed the shooting down of at least 123 long-range Ukrainian drones overnight into Monday morning.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, said in posts to Telegram that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at airports in Sochi, Volgograd, Kaluga, Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod overnight.
Flight restrictions were also introduced at three of Moscow’s four international airports — Domodedovo, Ivanovo and Zhukovsky — amid the latest attacks, Rosaviatsiya said.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in a post to Telegram that four Ukrainian drones were shot down en route to the capital in the early hours of Monday, marking the eighth consecutive day of Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Moscow.
ABC News’ Victoria Beaule, Yulia Drozd and Anna Sergeeva contributed to this report.
Close up of young college students hands holding mobile phones. (Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced he would be introducing a social media ban for children 16 and under in Britain on Monday.
The ban would prohibit kids age 16 and under from using “platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X,” the U.K. government said in a statement, but it is not expected to impact messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp.
“We’re going further than any country in the world by banning social media for under-16s and putting wider protections in place to give kids their childhood back,” Starmer said in a press conference Monday, saying the social media ban will “give [kids] more time, more security, more freedom to grow up, more opportunity.”
“This is a line in the sand. Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations,” he added.
Social media platforms generally require users to be at least 13 years old to use their platforms and services, but those requirements may vary according to local laws.
Starmer said he hopes the legislation for the social media ban would be discussed in the U.K. parliament before Christmas and would be implemented in early 2027.
Britain is following a similar strategy as Australia, whose social media ban for kids went into effect in December 2025, but is adding more security measures, according to the government.
“The government will also go further than a blanket ban on social media with world-leading blocks on harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s,” the government said in a statement.
Other countries have also proposed social media bans or announced similar age restrictions, including Canada, Brazil and Indonesia. Several additional countries, including France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand, and South Korea, are looking into or developing strategies to address kids’ social media use, according to The Associated Press.
Social media companies have pushed back against proposals to ban social media for kids under 16, an important user base for the companies and their bottom line.
“We’ve invested in expert-led, age-appropriate experiences and default protections for teens for over a decade and will continue to do so,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement, following the U.K. government’s announcement on Monday. “YouTube is a vital resource for young people, educators and parents. Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services.”
Snapchat said it shared the British government’s “objective of protecting people from online harm” but noted that “because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer — it may simply push them to less safe platforms.
“We have long supported thoughtful and proportionate regulation, including the UK’s groundbreaking Online Safety Act, and remain committed to working with [the U.K.’s Office of Communications] on implementation,” a Snap Company spokesperson in a statement. “It is vital that the Government now carefully considers the scope of a ban, and how it will define and apply its exclusions.”
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and the messaging app Whatsapp, said the company also opposes a social media ban for children.
“We share the goal of keeping teens safe online, which is why we developed Teen Accounts to automatically limit who can contact them and the content they see,” a Meta spokesperson said. “Like others, we don’t think bans will achieve this goal.”
The Meta spokesperson added that such bans “risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”
“To be both effective and easy for parents, any restrictions must be underpinned by an age verification system on devices so people aren’t asked to hand over ID to dozens of individual services to prove their age,” they said. “We will continue to engage with the government and Ofcom as they work to implement this policy.”
When reached by ABC News, TikTok said in a statement, “We share the government’s goal of safe online experiences for teens, which is why teen accounts on TikTok have more than 50 preset safety and privacy settings, such as private accounts, and we continue to invest in the latest technologies to advance platform safety. We will examine the details of the government’s measures, and we look forward to collaborating constructively with the government on this important issue.”
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives at the White House on April 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. P (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump cursed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a roughly 15-minute phone call on Monday, multiple sources familiar with the call told ABC News, with the president angered by Israel’s escalation in Lebanon and its potential to imperil the administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran.
Trump accused Netanyahu of being ungrateful and called him “crazy,” sources familiar with the call said.
At one point during the tense call, Trump asked Netanyahu, “What the f— are you doing?”
Axios first reported on the expletive-filled call.
News emerged on Monday that Iran was threatening to call off talks over Israeli conduct in Lebanon — where the Israel Defense Forces are engaged with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.
“The Iranian negotiating team will suspend ‘talks and the exchange of texts through mediators,'” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not confirm the report, but posted on X saying that a “ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also said in a statement that Iran “considers crossing the red lines in Lebanon and Gaza to mean direct war.”
Trump brushed the warnings off, insisting he “couldn’t care less.”
But behind the scenes, the president told senior administration officials he wanted to speak with Netanyahu, furious that an escalation in Lebanon could derail any progress made in the talks. The president had just made edits to a proposed peace plan and had sent it to Iran for consideration.
After Monday’s call, Netanyahu released a statement. “I spoke with President Trump this evening and told him that if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut,” he said.
“Our position remains the same. At the same time, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said.
Monday’s call was not the first time that Trump and Netanyahu have had a tense conversation. Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu have boiled over in previous instances where Israel has taken action against Iran and its proxies, but Monday’s conversation further underscored the administration’s distress over the potential that its ongoing negotiations with Iran are being undermined.
Following the call Monday afternoon, Trump posted on social media that talks with Iran were continuing at “a rapid pace.”
Later on Monday, the president struck a much different tone with Netanyahu.
“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi!,” the president posted on social media.
ABC News has contacted the White House to request comment.
ABC News’ Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
