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

At least 13 people were killed and dozens injured overnight in Kyiv, local authorities said, as Russia launched its latest massive drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of Thursday.

Fires were burning at sites across the capital as dawn broke, with strikes or debris hitting residential buildings in several districts and a hotel on one of Kyiv’s central boulevards. The death toll of 13 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.

Residents look out of a broken window on Thursday morning after their apartment building was hit by a Russian missile.

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. President 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,” he said, speaking on a visit to Dublin.

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

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.

People take shelter at a metro station during Russian air attacks on Kyiv

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, Andriy Sybiha, who is currently 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.”

The Guardian wp:paragraph