At least 17 dead as Russia launches massive drone and missile attack on Kyiv

At least 17 people have been killed and dozens injured overnight in Kyiv, local authorities have said, as Russia launched its latest massive drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital.

Fires were burning at sites across the capital as dawn broke on Thursday, with strikes or debris hitting residential buildings in several districts and a hotel on one of Kyiv’s central boulevards. The death toll may rise, as local emergency services said 86 people were injured, 70 of whom had been hospitalised.

Loud explosions shook the capital for several hours as waves of drones as well as cruise and ballistic missiles came towards the capital and Ukrainian air defence attempted to shoot them down. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said that at one site the first to ‌sixth floors of an apartment building ‌had collapsed after a direct hit. At another location, people were pulled out from under rubble after part of a block of flats collapsed.

Russia regularly launches combined missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital and there had been speculation for some days that another massive attack was in the works. Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians on Wednesday that it could come that night. “I am asking all our people to be extra careful, take care of yourselves and your children, and use shelters, this is very important,” the president said, speaking on a visit to Dublin.

Thousands of people took shelter in metro stations across the capital, paying renewed attention to strikes after more than four years of full-scale war, due to the severity of recent mass attacks. In late May, Russia warned foreign diplomats to leave the city, saying it planned to intensify strikes on “decision-making centres” there.

The latest strikes come as Russia faces fuel shortages after a Ukrainian campaign of long-range drone strikes against oil refineries in the country. Multiple Russian regions have been forced to introduce petrol rationing, while in occupied Crimea, Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency.

Ukrainian officials say they intend to keep up the pressure on Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which has served as a logistical hub for the Russian occupation of parts of south-eastern Ukraine since 2022. On Thursday morning, the governor of Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region said one person had been killed in a drone strike on industrial facilities there.

The Russian defence ministry said it had used weapons launched from air, land and sea during Thursday’s attacks on Ukraine, and claimed it was in retaliation for Ukrainian strikes. Moscow said it had targeted military facilities and energy infrastructure in the attacks, which also hit several regions outside the capital.

The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, who is on a working visit to Japan, said on Thursday morning that it was “immoral” to claim the strikes were retaliation for Ukraine’s attacks on Russia.

“In this war there is an aggressor and a country defending itself,” he wrote on X. “Russia has no right to make any strikes against Ukraine, while Ukraine has every right to respond, defend from aggressor, and strike any legitimate military targets in Russia. Do not equate an aggressor and a country defending from aggression.”

Sybiha reiterated Kyiv’s urgent plea for Ukraine’s allies to supply more air defences, saying that the capital had “suffered a night of horror”.

Klitschko announced that Friday would be a day of mourning in Kyiv. He said damage was recorded across the entire city of about 3 million people, with some buildings smashed.

Ukraine’s neighbour Poland, a Nato and EU member, scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure. Finland briefly issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland, its defence forces said on X.