German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv unannounced on Sunday with new support for Ukraine: €1 billion in military aid drawn from already approved budget funds, plus €350 million to repair and rebuild destroyed power plants.
Standing outside the Presidium building of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, damaged by a Russian drone, Merz addressed the Russian president directly: “Mr. Putin, end this senseless war! We are ready to talk, ready to speak with one another about bringing this war to an end. But these barbaric attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population must stop.”

A strike near the German embassy
The academy building in central Kyiv was hit by a Russian drone on September 28, killing two people and wounding seven. Merz noted that it lies “just a few hundred meters from the German embassy” and that there had been an air raid alert in Kyiv “this morning, on a peaceful Sunday.” He toured the ruins with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as sirens sounded again; drone alerts went off five times in the first five hours of the visit.

“These are daily war crimes being committed here,” Merz said, pointing to attacks on infrastructure as the country prepares for winter. Talks with Moscow are possible, he said, “but only once the weapons fall silent, and the weapons must fall silent.”
Zelensky said the academy itself had been the target. “We know for sure that it was a deliberate strike; there is corresponding video,” he said. On the same day, a Russian strike hit Kyiv’s North Bridge over the Dnipro River.