Russia unleashed its heaviest aerial assault on Ukraine’s capital in months on Thursday, striking residential neighborhoods, a shopping mall, and European diplomatic offices. At least 21 people were killed, including four children, and dozens more injured, Ukrainian authorities said.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Moscow launched nearly 600 drones and 31 missiles in a coordinated overnight barrage, targeting all ten districts of Kyiv. Most of the projectiles were intercepted, but several ballistic and cruise missiles pierced air defenses, causing widespread destruction.

The deadliest strike occurred in the Darnytskyi district, where a five-story apartment building collapsed, killing 17 people. In central Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, explosions damaged the British Council and European Union offices. Emergency workers pulled survivors from the rubble as fires burned through the night.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack, calling it Moscow’s retaliation against recent peace initiatives. “Russia chooses ballistics over diplomacy,” he said in a televised address, urging Western allies to tighten sanctions and accelerate weapons deliveries.

The Kremlin defended the strikes, saying they targeted military and industrial facilities, while insisting Russia remained “open to negotiations.”

The attack triggered swift international condemnation. The European Union and the United Kingdom summoned Russian envoys to protest the damage to their institutions in Kyiv. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session, and Washington announced an $825 million arms package to bolster Ukraine’s defenses.

The assault dominated headlines worldwide and fueled a surge of online activity, with CCTV footage and eyewitness videos from Kyiv shared widely across social media platforms.

The strikes also came as NATO projected that all 32 of its members will reach the alliance’s defense spending benchmark of 2% of GDP this year, underscoring heightened security concerns across Europe.

Despite the devastation, Ukrainian officials vowed resilience. “Kyiv will endure,” said Mayor Vitali Klitschko. “We will rebuild, and we will not be broken.”

Egusi melon seeds, a staple ingredient in Nigeria’s beloved egusi soup, have made history after being sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for scientific research. The experiment is part of a project studying how food crops react to space conditions, with the long-term goal of ensuring astronauts have access to nutritious, culturally diverse meals during missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The seeds spent seven days orbiting Earth in the Crew-11 capsule launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre on August 1. They were carefully packed in test tubes alongside heritage seeds from Costa Rica, Armenia, and Guatemala.

Nigerian space scientist Temidayo Oniosun, who handpicked the egusi seeds from markets in Oyo State, explained that the mission is about more than nutrition: “The goal is that in the next couple of decades, when people are living on the Moon, on Mars and they’re looking at growing food… foods that are native to Africa would be part of that.”

Egusi is valued not only for its cultural significance but also for its high protein content, making it a strong candidate for space farming. Florida-based scientist Wagner Vendrame, one of the researchers on the project, highlighted the importance of moving beyond the processed dried meals astronauts rely on today.

The seeds are now being distributed to laboratories for propagation and testing. Scientists aim to determine whether exposure to space altered their genetic makeup or nutritional quality.

“By looking at the changes in the plants and the seeds themselves, we can tell—are those plants still the same? Would they still provide the same level of nutrition to astronauts?” Vendrame said.

If successful, the experiment could pave the way for traditional African foods to be cultivated in extraterrestrial environments, ensuring both diversity and sustainability in future space diets.