At least two people were killed and 11 injured after a mass overnight Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, officials said Sunday.
Among the dead was a one-year-old child whose body was recovered from the rubble, Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said. A young woman is also believed to have been killed. Local authorities said residential buildings in the western Svyatoshynskyi and south-eastern Darnytskyi districts were hit and several multi-storey blocks were partially destroyed and ablaze after direct strikes.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said debris from downed Russian drones struck four-storey residential buildings in the affected districts. Reporters saw a plume of smoke rising from the roof of the cabinet of ministers building in the city centre, though officials said it was not immediately clear whether the government building had been directly hit.
Air raid warnings were activated overnight across all regions of Ukraine as the strikes continued. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces also targeted Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine, where three infrastructure facilities were struck.
"The Russians are deliberately hitting civilian facilities," Tkachenko said, urging residents to remain in shelters. Emergency services and rescuers were working at the scenes, pulling victims from collapsed structures and fighting fires caused by the strikes.
The attack came as Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up warnings to Western countries against providing further support to Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities said the latest strikes included both missiles and attack drones, and multiple explosions were heard across Kyiv in the early hours, including at least one in the city centre.
Officials gave the toll of two dead and 11 injured; local authorities and emergency teams continued operations to locate and assist possible additional victims and to extinguish fires in damaged buildings. Kyiv city officials described significant damage to residential blocks and said investigations into the specific targets and flight paths were underway.
The strikes add to a pattern of cross-border attacks that Ukrainian officials say have increasingly struck civilian infrastructure, prompting continued calls from city leaders for residents to heed air-raid warnings and shelter directives. Kyiv authorities have repeatedly said they are reinforcing air defences and emergency response capabilities to respond to such attacks.
International monitoring and verification of the strikes’ precise impacts were ongoing. Ukrainian officials attributed the strikes to Russian forces; there were no immediate independent confirmations of the origins of all the weapons used or of all reported impacts.
Emergency services remained on site Sunday into the afternoon, and city officials asked residents to avoid affected areas to allow rescue and recovery operations to proceed unhindered.