Russia launched one of its largest combined missile and drone assaults on Kyiv in months overnight into Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding roughly 40 more as ballistic and hypersonic missiles slammed into residential buildings, a children's hospital and warehouses across the Ukrainian capital.
Explosions began just after midnight and continued in waves past 9 a.m., with a fresh alert over incoming Russian Banderol missiles sounding hours after the first strikes. Ukraine's Air Force said Russia fired 44 cruise missiles, two Banderol missiles, ballistic and Zircon hypersonic missiles, and 168 Shahed-type drones at the city; air defenses intercepted 39 of the cruise missiles and 145 of the drones, according to the Kyiv Independent. Ukrainian officials said strikes were recorded at 28 locations across the capital.
A children's hospital hit, and a toll that kept climbing
Casualty figures rose through the morning as rescue crews worked through rubble. President Volodymyr Zelensky put the initial death toll at 12; Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko's government later revised it upward to at least 13 in the capital, with one additional fatality reported in Brovary just outside the city, and roughly 40 people injured, including at least 14 hospitalized. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko had urged residents overnight to "stay in shelters" as explosions rocked the city.
Among the buildings hit was a children's hospital in the capital's Solomianskyi district, where windows were blown out and vehicles caught fire on the grounds; Euromaidan Press reported that people were trapped for a time in a shelter beneath the facility. A five-story residential building in the same district was also struck and caught fire, and warehouses burned in the Sviatoshynskyi district. Poland's air force scrambled fighter jets to secure its own airspace while the barrage was under way, a now-routine precaution during major Russian strikes near the Polish border.
"It was a massive attack. The Russians had been preparing for a long time, combining different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, aiming to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure."
President Volodymyr Zelensky
Zelensky added that "while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, such strikes do not always receive the response they should from the world" — a pointed reference to the diplomatic track that has so far failed to stop the bombardment.
Strikes land as peace talks stall
The attack came as US-brokered efforts to end the three-and-a-half-year war remain deadlocked. Zelensky said this month that Kyiv had sent Washington a new proposal built around pressuring Moscow, but American officials have said they had not yet received a finalized plan. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to travel to the region again this month in the latest attempt to revive talks that have stalled over territorial control and security guarantees, with no breakthrough imminent on either front.
Ukraine has continued to strike back at Russian energy infrastructure even as it absorbs nightly bombardment, with drone attacks reported this week on Russian oil refining and export facilities. Neither side has signaled willingness to accept the other's terms for a ceasefire, and Thursday's strikes are likely to intensify pressure on Washington to show concrete progress soon — or risk another cycle of escalation before any deal is reached.
A pattern of near-daily bombardment
Thursday's barrage was Russia's second major strike on the Ukrainian capital in 48 hours, part of an intensifying campaign against Kyiv's air-defense reserves and civilian morale that Ukrainian officials say has grown heavier as the diplomatic track has stalled. Kyiv's regional military administration said crews worked through the morning to clear debris, restore power to affected districts and search for anyone still unaccounted for beneath collapsed structures, while hospitals across the city treated a steady stream of walk-in and ambulance patients.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly argued that Kyiv's Western partners need to supply more Patriot interceptors and other air-defense systems if the country is to blunt the kind of saturation attacks seen overnight, combining decoys, cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons designed to overwhelm existing defenses. With winter now less than three months away, officials fear a repeat of previous years' campaigns against the power grid, and are pressing allies for both munitions and a faster diplomatic resolution before the cold sets in.
