More than a dozen people were killed in a major attack on Kyiv overnight into Thursday, the city mayor said, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was planning an extensive attack.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched nearly 500 drones and dozens of missiles towards the country in a “massive combined strike,” simultaneously targeting the capital from different directions.
While most of the missiles and drones were intercepted, some 33 missiles and drones made impacts.
More than 85 people were wounded in the attacks, including at least one child and several medical workers who were hurt in a strike on an ambulance substation, according to Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, who said 13 people had been killed.
“There have been very significant direct hits on residential buildings, where, unfortunately, the bodies of the deceased are being recovered from under the rubble,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its military launched a “massive strike using high-precision, long-range weapons,” including drones, targeting military and energy infrastructure in Kyiv and the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions.
But Ukraine alleged civilian infrastructure and residential buildings had been hit.
“We demand strong international responses. Not only words of condemnation but concrete action to stop Russian terror,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said, warning that the death toll would likely rise.
Photos and videos showed fires burning on crumbling buildings – many of them residential apartment blocks – and rescuers combing through large piles of rubble and debris.
A long night in bomb shelters
The strikes were presaged by a request from Zelensky Wednesday for residents to be “especially careful” and to heed air-raid sirens, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been “preparing a massive strike against Ukraine for some time.”
“That is exactly the threat we are facing tonight,” Zelensky said in a post to X.
Residents packed into metro stations Wednesday evening, preparing for a long night of strikes. Sirens began sounding around 8 p.m. local time and continued well into the morning, with the attack lasting 11 hours, according to city officials.
More than four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s cities face near-nightly attacks from Moscow’s drones and missiles. But Kyiv’s forces have also found ways to strike back at its much larger neighbor.
Ukraine has launched an unprecedented drone campaign against Russia in the past month, targeting energy infrastructure in long-range attacks that Zelensky has framed as a key strategy to force Moscow to end the war.
Overnight Thursday, Ukraine’s military said it struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in Kstovo, hundreds of miles to the east of Moscow. It also said it struck a railway bridge over the Donets River which it says Russia uses for military activities, and a Russian command and observation post in Kharkiv.
On a single night last week, Russia reported intercepting 660 drones across 12 regions – suggesting one of the largest Ukrainian attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Those attacks have penetrated deeper into Russia, bringing the realities of war to cities much further from the front lines.
But Moscow’s damaging air assaults on Ukraine also keep coming.
Earlier in June, a Russian attack in the heart of Kyiv set fire to a prominent Ukrainian monastery complex, the UNESCO-listed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.
Teele Rebane contributed reporting.
