Less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump promised to end the bloodshed in Ukraine , Russia launched the second-largest airstrike of the war so far on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding 48.

Kiev, hundreds of kilometers from the front, has been faced with a relentless cycle of missile and drone attacks since the start of the Russian invasion.

Sirens, shelters and destroyed buildings are now part of everyday life. Analysts and residents describe the attacks as a deliberate intimidation strategy.

Russia is pressuring us with psychological methods, it wants to exhaust us and impose terror, Liliya Sky from Kiev told The Independent. It is a steady, methodical campaign of moral and physical exhaustion so that people will surrender and accept territorial losses just to stop the war. But Ukrainians have a different mentality: I would rather die than submit .

In the latest attack, 629 missiles and drones hit targets in Ukraine, most of them in Kiev. At least 100 buildings were damaged, including a shopping mall, while the offices of the EU delegation and the British Council were also destroyed.

Experts point out that this is a terror strategy, aimed at breaking the morale of society.

Keir Giles of Chatham House said that Moscow seeks to inflict maximum suffering on the civilian population, using methods that have been applied in Syria, Chechnya and elsewhere.

Natia Seskuria of RUSI emphasized that the systematic targeting of political infrastructure is a central element of the Russian strategy, in the hope that a war-weary society will pressure its leadership to accept compromise.

So far, the tactic has not worked, as Ukrainian society is showing resilience. The Russians are not succeeding on the ground and are trying to make up for it by terrorizing cities, said Yuriy Shak, an adviser to the Ministry of Strategic Industries.

After the attack, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of choosing ballistic missiles over the negotiating table and called for new, tough sanctions against Russia.

The recent summit in Alaska between Trump and Putin failed to produce any results, while Western leaders continue to accuse the Russian president of avoiding serious talks to end the war.

Giles warned that the consequences go beyond Ukraine: Russia has shown it can cause mass destruction over long distances. No one in Europe should consider themselves safe.