Missile and drone strikes target residential areas in numerous districts across Kyiv.
A “massive” Russian drone and missile attack has killed at least 10 people in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the surrounding region, according to officials.
Officials said the strikes on Monday morning targeted residential areas in numerous districts across the city. The assault, the second huge overnight blitz in a week, suggests Russia is eager to raise the pressure as global attention is dominated by the decision of the United States to join Israel’s escalating air campaign against Iran.
Russia fired 352 drones and decoys, 11 ballistic missiles and five cruise missiles overnight, according to Ukraine’s air force. Air defences intercepted or jammed the majority of the projectiles before they could reach their targets, it said in a statement.
“Another massive attack on the capital. Possibly, several waves of enemy drones,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said in a statement.
“The Russians’ style is unchanged – to hit where there may be people,” Tkachenko said on Telegram. “Residential buildings, exits from shelters – this is the Russian style.”
As well as residential buildings, hospitals, sports infrastructure, and the entrance of a metro station being used as a bomb shelter were hit during the large-scale attack, emergency services said.
The attack caused damage in six of Kyiv’s 10 districts and wounded at least 10 people, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.
Several people “were killed in Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, where the entire entrance of a residential high-rise building was destroyed,” Klymenko said. “There are still people under the rubble.”
A short-range drone attack in the Chernihiv region late on Sunday killed two people and wounded 10 others, including three children, according to authorities.
Another person was killed and eight were wounded overnight in the city of Bila Tserkva, some 85km (53 miles) southwest of Kyiv.
Sabotage
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said preliminary data indicated that Russian forces had used North Korean missiles in the strikes on Kyiv.
He called Russia, North Korea and Iran, which has provided drones to Moscow, a “coalition of murderers” and warned of a potential spread of the “terror” if their alliance continues.
Moscow’s military said on Monday afternoon that its overnight strikes had targeted “military-industrial complex enterprises in the Kyiv region”.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched in February 2022, but thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
Russia’s deadliest attack on Kyiv came last week as it unleashed hundreds of drones, killing 28 people and injuring more than 150, with Ukrainian officials saying nearly 30 sites were hit in waves of attacks.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, amid the rise in attacks on the capital, has pledged to intensify strikes on Russia.
“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,” he said, according to the AFP news agency.
To that end, Ukraine “will increase the scale and depth” of its attacks on Russian military targets, he added.
Russian forces launched at least 47 drones against Ukraine and fired three missiles overnight on Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging efforts towards agreeing a peace deal, which has been pushed by US President Donald Trump, to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.