At least 18 people were killed early Thursday when Russia launched one of its largest overnight air assaults on Kyiv, bombarding the Ukrainian capital with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles.
Multiple explosions shook buildings and reverberated across the capital 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."
"As of now, 18 people are known to have been killed."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had cut short a visit to Dublin Wednesday night and warned Ukrainians about the upcoming strike.
Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones during the attack, the Ukrainian air force said. Air defense units downed most of those, but 25 ballistic missiles and 12 drones struck 33 locations.
The Russian Defense 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 a retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civil infrastructure. Russia downed 327 drones overnight, the ministry said.
For its part, the Ukrainian General Staff said it had hit an oil refinery in the town of Kstovo in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region overnight.
Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin said one person was killed and four people wounded in a drone strike that damaged an industrial facility.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha reiterated Kyiv's urgent plea for Ukraine's allies to supply more air defenses, saying that the capital had "suffered a night of horror."
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a day of mourning in Kyiv for Friday. He said that damage was recorded across the entire city of about 3 million people, with some buildings smashed.
Emergency services were working through the rubble of what used to be a nine-storey building on the left bank of the Dnipro River that bisects the city as the sun rose and fires flared up around it.
City officials said that about 90 people, including children, paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station, were wounded and that some people were still trapped inside damaged residential buildings.
"Our house is on fire. The attack is still going on. Oleg was pulling our neighbor out of the burning house, while I was phoning all the emergency services during the explosions," Iryna Plekhova, a Kyiv resident, said on Facebook, posting a picture of a half-destroyed apartment building with no windows.
"We do not have an apartment anymore."
Pictures posted online showed a blaze at the top of a building on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while elsewhere in the city, windows blew out and cars were destroyed.
People crowded into underground stations carrying children, belongings, tents and pets as air raid alerts blared across the city.
Ukraine's neighbor Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure. Finland also briefly issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland before lifting it later, its defense forces said on X.
After years in which Ukraine bore the brunt of relentless long-range attacks from Russia, Kyiv has intensified its own strikes deeper into Russian territory in recent months, mainly hitting energy targets.
That has triggered a fuel crisis in Russia, forcing the world's third-biggest oil producer to import gasoline from as far away as India.
Russia has responded with a stepped-up air campaign against Ukrainian cities, last month hitting a thousand-year-old Kyiv cathedral foundational to the Orthodox faith in both countries.
Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, said only sustained military support for Ukraine and increased pressure on Moscow could help stop Russian attacks.
"Today, I will propose to sanction more entities supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex in response to the strikes," she said in a post on X. "The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed."
Zelenskyy has proposed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the more than four-year war, which the Kremlin leader has rejected.
Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians in strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow denies intentionally attacking civilians but says attacks on what it describes as civil infrastructure are legitimate because they hurt Ukraine's ability to wage war.Kyiv has also launched attacks on Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine on a far smaller scale.
