Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv overnight killed 15 people and wounded 42 others, in one of the deadliest attacks on Ukraine this year. Kyiv's military administration said the strikes, combining ballistic missiles and drones, were a deliberate attempt to target civilians.
Attack details
The attack involved 24 ballistic missiles, 115 drones and four anti-ship missiles, Ukraine said. Kyiv's defence ministry reported shooting down 98 of the drones, but none of the ballistic missiles were intercepted. The strikes came just days after seven people died in an earlier attack on Monday.
Air raid sirens sounded throughout the city overnight on Tuesday, with warehouses and residential buildings damaged. Fires raged at multiple locations in Brovary, Bucha and Fastiv districts, Ukraine's emergency service said. In the capital, one person was killed and 15 were wounded.
Official statements
Administrator Timur Tkachenko said in a statement: "The enemy is once again deliberately striking civilians and civilian infrastructure." Katarina Mathernova, Ukraine's ambassador to the European Union, said sirens only stopped ringing in the morning, with rescue teams "still pulling people from the rubble" as 9am approached.
She wrote on X: "Others are still trapped beneath collapsed buildings. Russia is trying to break Kyiv. The attacks come so often now that people no longer have time to breathe between them. They barely recover from one night before the next one begins."
Impact and response
Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's president on defense technology development, said the war of attrition has entered a new phase. "The enemy is attacking everything indiscriminately - retail warehouses, food storage facilities, logistics hubs, enterprises, building materials warehouses," he said on Facebook.
Russia's defence ministry claimed the attack was directed at logistics hubs and supply centres in Kyiv and surrounding areas. Ukraine has been urgently calling for more Patriot systems to intercept Russian attacks and has appealed to the Trump administration to allow it to build its own. The US President offered the country the right to make the weapons in July but reneged on the proposal earlier this week, saying: "We have not agreed to that. We're talking about it. But it's a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology."
