Russia unleashed one of the heaviest aerial assaults of the war on Ukraine, firing 73 missiles and more than 650 drones at Kyiv and cities across the country in an overnight barrage that killed at least 23 people, among them two children, and wounded roughly 130 others. The capital bore the brunt of the attack, but Dnipro, Poltava, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia were also struck.
Within Kyiv, officials said five medical facilities and numerous residential and commercial buildings were damaged or destroyed, setting off fires, igniting cars and scattering debris that landed on a kindergarten. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported blazes and power outages in the Podil district, and rescue crews worked through the morning to reach people trapped beneath collapsed sections of apartment blocks.
The Ukrainian air force said the salvo included eight Zircon hypersonic missiles, likely the largest number of those weapons Russia has used in a single night, alongside cruise and ballistic missiles and waves of attack drones designed to overwhelm air defences. Ukrainian crews said they destroyed or suppressed 40 of the missiles and 602 of the drones, a high interception rate that nonetheless left dozens of projectiles to find their targets.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was a deliberate message from Moscow. "If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue," he said, appealing once more to the United States and European partners for additional interceptors and longer-range air defence systems to blunt the bombardment of cities.
The scale of the strike underscored how Russia has leaned ever more heavily on mass drone-and-missile salvos to exhaust Ukraine's defences and erode civilian morale, even as the front lines have moved little. Each large barrage forces Kyiv to expend scarce interceptors, and Ukrainian officials have warned that stocks cannot keep pace without sustained resupply from abroad.
The assault came at a politically sensitive moment, with Western capitals debating the pace of military aid and the prospects for any negotiated pause in the fighting. For residents of Kyiv, emerging again to shattered windows and smoke over the skyline, the night was a reminder that the war's most acute danger now often arrives from the air.