At least four people were killed in a major Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Friday morning, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Dozens of residents in the capital area were injured, local authorities said. Moscow reported destroying more than 200 Ukrainian drones within its territory.
“Four people were killed (…) and about 430 drones and 18 missiles were used,” the Ukrainian president declared. He accused Russia of “an attack designed to cause maximum damage to the population and civilian infrastructure.”
Timur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said: “Russian troops are attacking residential buildings. Many large buildings have been damaged in almost all districts of Kiev.”
“An elderly woman was killed and 24 people were injured, including a pregnant woman and a 10-year-old boy, in the Desnyansky district,” Kyiv police reported via Telegram. Police added that about 30 residential buildings were damaged by missile and drone attacks overnight.
Local sources reported hearing loud explosions in the city center early in the morning and seeing air defense systems activated against drone and missile attacks.
Early Friday morning, Kiev’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, warned of a “massive enemy attack on the capital” and called on residents to evacuate. He added that fires broke out in several areas after the airstrikes and emergency services were called out.
“Part of the heating network has been damaged. In Desniansky district, some buildings are temporarily without heating due to an emergency in the main heating pipeline,” he explained. The mayor warned that water and electricity supplies are also expected to be cut.
Eight of the city’s 10 districts were hit by airstrikes, according to emergency services, and city hall warned of disruption to public transport in the capital region on Friday morning.
Oleksandr Markushin, the mayor of Irpin, a municipality in the Kiev region, said on his Facebook page that it had been a “difficult night” with “several drones and missiles flying over the city.”
Continuing an offensive that began in 2022, Russia is advancing with better-equipped forces into eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Donetsk region, where most of the recent fighting has been concentrated.
Meanwhile, the Russian government has stepped up its bombing campaign against Ukraine’s civilian, energy and railway networks for weeks. As winter approaches, temperatures in the country drop, and electricity and gas become important for heating homes.
Ukrainian drone destroyed
On the Russian side, authorities said they had destroyed a number of Ukrainian drones, some of which targeted the Novorossiysk oil port on the Black Sea and the cities of Volgograd and Saratov.
“Overnight, air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 216 Ukrainian drones, 66 of them south of Krasnodar and 59 over the Black Sea,” the ministry said in a Telegram statement.
A fire broke out at a refinery in Novorossiysk, but it was later extinguished. Several residential buildings were damaged by debris from the drone, a civilian vessel was also damaged, and four people were injured, authorities said.
Drone attacks in Ukraine regularly damage the oil and gas sector and pipelines used to transport hydrocarbons, leading to soaring fuel prices.
Peace talks between Kiev and Moscow have stalled following the postponement of the Budapest summit between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
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