Russian forces launched a major overnight drone and missile assault on Kyiv, killing 18 people in what the city’s mayor has described as the “most massive attack” on the Ukrainian capital to date.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning and said around 90 others were injured. He added that an ambulance station was among the sites hit during the strikes.
While earlier attacks have resulted in higher casualty figures, officials said this latest barrage involved the largest number of weapons fired at the capital so far, with impacts recorded across a wide area of the city.
Several neighbourhoods were evacuated as explosions rocked buildings across Kyiv, coming just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was preparing a large-scale attack.
Moscow said its forces struck what it described as military plants in response to attacks on civilian infrastructure inside Russia.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that Russia would “continue to increase pressure on the Kyiv regime in order to achieve our set goals”.
Ukraine, however, accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilian areas, insisting it was wrong to compare the actions of an “aggressor” with those of a country defending itself.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said children were among a “significant number” of casualties recorded in the latest attacks.
“The enemy is once again deliberately targeting residential areas and killing civilians,” he said early Thursday.
Among the damaged sites was a high-rise apartment building in south-east Kyiv, where part of the structure was blown off by the impact.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a video posted on Telegram that rescuers were searching for several people, including a 15-year-old girl and her family, who were believed to be trapped following the strike.
“This is not retaliation”
On Kyiv’s left bank in the Darnytskyi district in the south-east of the capital, two missiles struck a residential neighbourhood, leaving widespread destruction in their wake.
One of the missiles landed near a kindergarten, carving out a large crater and setting nearby buildings ablaze. Several apartments were gutted, with balconies twisted and torn apart by the impact.
A second missile struck just a short distance away, hitting the end of a nine-storey residential block and causing part of the structure to collapse onto itself, leaving a mass of rubble and concrete. One resident told the BBC that several people were still unaccounted for and may have been sheltering in a basement at the time of the strike.
The area was left littered with destroyed vehicles, shattered glass and a thick layer of grey dust coating everything in sight as rescue teams worked through the debris. Relatives gathered nearby, watching in distress as efforts continued to locate survivors.
Among those affected was Svitlana, who lives next to the damaged building. She told the BBC she had taken shelter in a corridor during the air raid and heard the explosions as they hit.
“It wasn’t scary,” she said quietly. “I’ve been through it all before.” She later shared that she had previously been injured in another Russian strike in a different town that also killed her mother. Two years on, her son was killed while fighting in the war for Ukraine.
Another resident, Oleksiy, his face cut and bloodied from shattered glass, said he had stepped outside after hearing the first explosion when the second strike hit.
“This is not retaliation by Russia for Ukrainian strikes,” he said, rejecting Moscow’s explanation for the attack. “They started this war. This is a residential area, and they targeted it.”
The assault on Kyiv lasted for more than 11 hours and unfolded in several waves, beginning
with a drone strike on the city’s historic district that sparked a fire at a hotel in the centre of the capital.
At around 1:00 a.m., Russia launched dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles. After a brief pause, another wave of cruise missiles struck at about 3:00 a.m., followed by a sustained drone assault that continued until dawn.
Residents of Kyiv, many of whom have endured more than four years of war, say Russia’s recent attacks on the capital have changed in both scale and intensity. While strikes now occur slightly less frequently—typically every few days—they have become longer, more coordinated and more destructive than in previous months.
Ukrainian military analysts have described the latest wave of Russian strikes as one of the most demanding tests of the country’s air defence systems in recent months.
Speaking to Ukrainian media, aviation expert Bohdan Dolintsev said Russia’s tactic of launching multiple types of weapons simultaneously, while attempting to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences through sustained attacks, has created an exceptionally difficult operating environment for the country’s air defence forces.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight, with Kyiv remaining the primary target.
Although Ukrainian air defence systems intercepted the majority of the incoming weapons, 25 ballistic missiles and 12 drones struck 33 locations across the country.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Ukraine renewed its appeal to international partners for additional air defence systems. President Volodymyr Zelensky also called on the United States to grant Ukraine licences to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles domestically.
Russia also carried out strikes on military bases in central and eastern Ukraine, according to the country’s Ministry of Defence.
The ministry said the attacks targeted Ukrainian defence and energy infrastructure in what it described as a response to “terrorist attacks launched by the Kyiv regime against civilian infrastructure” inside Russia.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities, targeting power infrastructure from the Moscow region to areas along the Black Sea.
The attacks prompted a rare acknowledgment by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the country was experiencing fuel shortages.
Ukraine, however, rejected Russia’s justification for the latest strikes. Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said it was “immoral” to portray the attacks as retaliation for Ukraine’s operations inside Russia.
“In this war, there is an aggressor and a country defending itself,” Sybiha said.
Russia currently controls about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, much of which was captured during the early stages of its full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.
