KYIV, Ukraine — Russia hammered Kyiv in an 11-hour drone and missile attack overnight into Thursday morning, killing at least 21 civilians in the city and injuring scores more in what Moscow said was retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities.
Loud explosions shook the Ukrainian capital, where more than 50,000 people sheltered in subway stations after authorities issued air raid warnings, the Kyiv Metro said. Emergency crews dug through the rubble of collapsed and charred apartment buildings all day in search of victims.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the bombardment was in response to Ukraine’s recent barrage of long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine’s frequent attacks inside Russia — described by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a 40-day blitz — have especially targeted oil refineries, causing a fuel crisis that has frustrated Russians already feeling the war’s economic toll.
More than four years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine’s technological advances in drone engineering have in recent months given it an edge, analysts and Western officials say. Its strikes on supply routes behind the front line have robbed the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield and made its progress slow and costly, they say.
Kyiv’s forces have especially targeted supplies to Crimea, triggering the worst fuel crisis on the Black Sea peninsula since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 and delivering a blow to the Kremlin’s narrative that Moscow is winning the war.
Ukrainian officials say they are trying to force Putin to the negotiating table, but so far Moscow’s response has been to hit back.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war, most recently by the Trump administration, haven’t produced results. President Donald Trump and Zelensky are expected to attend next week’s NATO summit in Turkey.
Putin thinks that time is on his side, that Western support will peter out and that Ukraine’s resistance will eventually collapse under pressure from strategic bombing, analysts say.
Ukraine’s top diplomat says it was a ‘night of horror’ in Kyiv
The attack killed 21 people in Kyiv, according to the country’s Emergency Service. More than 90 others were reported injured.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it was a “night of horror” in the capital, which had a prewar population of roughly 3 million people.
Flashes from exploding drones and missiles lit up the night, and loud booms echoed through Kyiv. Tracers from air defense fire streaked through the air as a huge pall of black smoke rose into the sky.
More than 30 locations across the city reported damage, including about 20 residential buildings, authorities said.
Kyiv resident Serhii Budko said three or four ballistic missiles hit his district of the city. “We were inside the shelter and felt the shelter shaking — the ceiling and floor, everything,” the 24-year-old said.
In Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, residents were trapped inside a damaged nine-story building, and in the Darnytskyi district, most of a nine-story building collapsed.
In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, meanwhile, a Russian strike killed a 7-year-old girl and wounded four other people, including an 11-year-old girl, all members of the same family, regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said.
The bombardment was “exclusively against military or military-linked targets,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
No reliable figures are available for battlefield casualties in the war. A report earlier this year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, estimated that up to 1.8 million soldiers have been killed, wounded, or gone missing on both sides, with Russian troops accounting for most of that number.
Ukrainian officials urge countries to provide more air defenses
The attack used “high-precision long-range weapons” and drones to strike weapons factories and energy facilities in and around Kyiv, and “military airfield infrastructure” in other parts of Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement said.
In all, Russia fired 74 missiles and 496 drones in the attack, Ukraine’s air force said.
Ukraine’s air defenses have improved throughout the war, especially in countering Russian drones. But it is harder to stop ballistic missiles, which accounted for roughly a third of the missiles fired overnight.
Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said in April that the country’s weapons factories meet up to 75% of its military’s needs. But he and other Ukrainian officials have pleaded with partner countries to supply more Patriot systems that offer the best protection from Russian aerial attacks.
Ukraine attacks another Russian oil refinery
Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries overnight in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, starting a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Also, Ukrainian forces struck a railway bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, it said. The bridge was used by Russian forces to transport personnel, weapons, and military supplies, according to the General Staff.
