Valentyn Ogirenko, Gleb Garanich and Olena Harmash
Updated ,first published
Kyiv: Russian forces have attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, killing at least 20 people and wounding scores more, as drones and missiles struck residential buildings in what Russia said was retaliation for recent attacks on its civil infrastructure.
Multiple explosions shook buildings and reverberated across the city throughout the night as thousands of residents rushed to bomb shelters and underground metro stations. It was the second-deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv so far this year.
“This night, Russia once again carried out a cynical, large-scale attack on Ukraine,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on the Telegram app. “The enemy launched dozens of ballistic missiles. Kyiv was hit the hardest.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had cut short a visit to Dublin on Wednesday night (Kyiv time) and warned Ukrainians about the upcoming strike.
“As of now, 20 deaths are known,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Thursday in a post on Telegram.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a day of mourning had been declared in the city for Friday. Earlier, Klitschko said at least 86 people were injured and 70 hospitalised in attacks that damaged residential areas in seven city districts.
Video footage showed emergency services working through the rubble of what used to be a nine-storey building as the sun was rising over Kyiv and as fires flared up around the city.
Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said three dozen locations across the city had been damaged in the attacks.
“The enemy has once again deliberately targeted residential neighbourhoods and killed civilians. We have sustained extensive damage and a significant number of casualties, including children,” he wrote on Telegram.
In an earlier post, Klitschko said the injured included paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station, and that some people were still trapped inside damaged residential buildings.
Pictures posted online showed a fire burning out of control at the top of a building on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while elsewhere in the city, windows were blown out and cars were destroyed.
Multiple explosions were heard in Kyiv, a witness said, and authorities in the region surrounding the capital said on Telegram separately there were also casualties there.
People crowded into underground stations carrying children, belongings, tents and pets as air raid alerts were issued for most of Ukraine’s territory overnight in Russia’s worst attack on the country since mid-June.
“Do not delay decisions on air defence for Ukraine! This is our main request to our partners after Kyiv suffered a night of horror,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X as he visited Japan, a Ukraine ally, on Thursday (Kyiv time).
Neighbouring Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure before calling those back and saying no airspace violation was recorded. Finland also briefly issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland before lifting it later, its defence forces said on X.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, in a Telegram post, said its “massive attack” using long-range, high-precision air-, land- and sea-launched weapons and drones hit military and energy facilities, as well as airports in Kyiv and other locations.
The ministry said it was retaliation for Ukraine’s attacks on Russian civil infrastructure, without elaborating. Russia downed 327 drones overnight, the ministry said. This number includes drones shot down over Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
Ukraine has recently intensified strikes deeper into Russian territory, triggering a widespread fuel crisis in the world’s third-biggest oil producer and forcing it to import gasoline from as far away as India.
The governor of the remote Russian region of Novosibirsk, Andrey Travnikov, said on Telegram the fuel crisis was worsening for the area more than 3000 kilometres east of Moscow, and refuelling priority would be given to emergency services.
In Russia, one person was killed, four people wounded, and an industrial facility damaged in a drone attack on the Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said. The region is home to NORSI oil refinery, one of Russia’s largest.
Governor Alexander Drozdenko of Russia’s north-western Leningrad region, Putin’s home and where large export and oil refining facilities are located, said on Telegram that Russian forces brought down seven drones on Thursday.
In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, a man was killed and his wife injured after a drone hit their home, local authorities said separately on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify details of the casualties. Russia and Ukraine say they do not deliberately target civilians.
