Kyiv Hit by Deadly Russian Airstrike; At Least Nine Killed

At least nine people have been killed and several others injured following a Russian missile and drone assault overnight in Ukraine’s Kyiv region, the country’s interior minister confirmed on Monday.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko reported on social media that the strikes targeted residential neighborhoods, hospitals, and sports facilities. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that six of the victims were found in a high-rise residential building in the capital. The city’s military administration added that 33 more individuals had been wounded in the attacks.

According to the Ukrainian air force, the latest onslaught involved 352 Russian drones and 16 missiles directed at Ukrainian territory, with the majority of them targeting the Kyiv region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to visit London on Monday for discussions with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer concerning the United Kingdom’s continued military assistance to Ukraine.

Valeriy Mankuta, a 33-year-old resident of Kyiv, recounted his experience of surviving the strike after his building was struck by what authorities said was a missile. He told Reuters he “woke up in the rubble” and escaped his damaged apartment by climbing out through a window. “There were bricks on me, there was something in my mouth. It was total hell,” he recalled.

Another local resident, Natalia Marshavska, described hearing the hum of a drone before it exploded above her apartment. The blast threw her across the room and shattered her windows, she told AFP. “Smoke began billowing everywhere,” she said. “It was horrible.”

Russia has ramped up aerial assaults on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, deploying large waves of missiles, drones, and decoys aimed at overwhelming Ukrainian air defense systems—posing a growing challenge for Ukrainian forces to intercept.

Thousands of Kyiv residents sought refuge in shelters during the early hours of Monday morning as drone activity and explosions rocked the city.

Ukraine’s emergency services released footage showing residents being escorted away from a still-burning high-rise structure. One of the entrances to Kyiv’s metro stations—frequently used as a bomb shelter—sustained damage. Additionally, classrooms and dormitories at a local university were reportedly hit during the assault.

In a separate incident, a drone strike on a hospital in Bila Tserkva, a city just outside Kyiv, resulted in one fatality.

Meanwhile, an attack in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on Monday killed two people and injured at least a dozen others, according to local authorities. President Zelensky stated that a school in the region was among the sites struck and was almost entirely destroyed.

“None of these Russian strikes are accidental—the Russian army knows exactly what it is targeting,” Zelensky posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky told reporters in Kyiv that Ukraine would escalate its retaliatory strikes on Russian positions. “We will not just sit in defence because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” Syrsky said.

The latest assault comes as Kyiv is still reeling from another deadly Russian attack last Tuesday, which left at least 28 people dead and over 100 wounded. That strike marked one of the most devastating attacks on the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Efforts to broker a diplomatic solution to the now three-year conflict remain stalled. The most recent direct talks between Russia and Ukraine concluded nearly three weeks ago and resulted only in limited agreements concerning the exchange of prisoners and the repatriation of the deceased.

No further negotiations have been scheduled as of now.

President Zelensky had been expected to meet former U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the recent G7 summit, but the meeting was cancelled after Trump departed early due to the deepening crisis in the Middle East.

Zelensky is also slated to attend a formal dinner during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, which begins on Tuesday.