Russian forces carried out a large-scale overnight drone and missile assault on Kyiv, leaving 10 people dead—including a child—and 38 injured, while causing widespread damage to residential and other buildings across seven districts, Ukrainian officials reported Thursday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack, saying it demonstrated Russia’s preference for “ballistics instead of the negotiating table” amid ongoing diplomatic efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the war, and called for new sanctions against Moscow.
Kyiv authorities said emergency teams battled fires and conducted search-and-rescue operations amid nine hours of continuous air alerts. Explosions lit up the night sky as drones hovered overhead, and rubble from destroyed buildings littered the streets.
The Ukrainian Air Force claimed it intercepted 563 of 598 Russian drones and 26 of 31 missiles launched nationwide, with debris falling at 26 locations and hits recorded at 13 key sites. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, described the strikes as “combined and systematic, targeting ordinary residential buildings.”
Recent months have seen a rise in Russian air attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the frontline, despite Moscow’s denial of civilian targeting. High-rise apartment blocks and other structures in multiple districts, including a partly destroyed five-storey building in the Darnytskyi suburb, sustained heavy damage, with rescue teams continuing to search for survivors.
Emergency crews are now responding to more than 20 affected sites across Kyiv. Meanwhile, Moscow’s Defense Ministry reported that Russian air defenses intercepted 102 Ukrainian drones overnight, which had targeted seven regions, while Ukrainian forces struck the Afipsky and Kuybyshevskyi oil refineries in retaliation.
