Russia launched a large missile and drone attack on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine overnight into Sunday, killing at least four people and injuring more than 80 in one of the largest aerial assaults on the capital in recent months.
Explosions sounded across Kyiv shortly after 1am as air raid sirens and missile alerts spread through the city. Residents crowded into metro stations and underground shelters while emergency crews responded to fires, collapsed buildings and damaged infrastructure across multiple districts.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 90 missiles and 600 drones during the attack. Ukrainian officials said more than 40 locations across Kyiv suffered damage, including residential buildings, schools, warehouses, shops and public infrastructure.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people died in the capital and more than 50 were injured. Thirty people required hospital treatment. Two more people were killed in the wider Kyiv region, according to regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk.
One missile strike hit a residential building in Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district and triggered a fire on the upper floors. Another strike damaged a school and blocked access to an air raid shelter with debris, according to local officials.
Reuters reported that the facade of a five-storey residential building collapsed during the strikes. Black smoke drifted across the skyline after sunrise while firefighters worked through the morning to extinguish fires and search damaged structures.
Ukraine’s air force warned during the night that Russia might launch an Oreshnik missile, a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The missile has been used only a handful of times since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
President Volodymyr Zelensky later said Russia launched an Oreshnik missile toward Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region. Ukrainian authorities later said work was continuing to confirm exactly which weapons had been used.
According to Zelensky, Russian strikes hit water infrastructure, residential buildings, schools and a market.
Russia’s defence ministry later confirmed the use of Oreshnik, along with Iskander, Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, according to Russian state media. Moscow described the operation as a retaliatory strike following Ukrainian attacks on targets in Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier accused Ukraine of striking a student dormitory in Starobilsk on Friday. Russian-installed authorities said more than a dozen people were killed in the attack. Ukraine denied targeting civilians and said it struck a Russian drone command unit in the area.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas condemned the overnight strikes and accused Russia of targeting civilians because of setbacks on the battlefield.
“These are abhorrent acts of terror meant to kill as many civilians as possible,” Kallas wrote on X.
The overnight attack spread beyond Kyiv. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said strikes were also reported in Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions.
Ukraine said its own forces carried out a separate overnight strike on the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal in Russia’s Krasnodar region. Ukraine’s general staff said the operation damaged oil loading infrastructure at one of Russia’s largest export terminals on the Black Sea.
Russia and Ukraine have both increased long-range strikes in recent weeks, with attacks reaching deeper into occupied territories and border regions on both sides.
HT