Russia hammered Kyiv in a major drone and missile attack overnight, killing at least 18 civilians and injuring scores more in what Moscow described as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
Loud explosions shook the Ukrainian capital for hours into Thursday morning, with many people sheltering at metro stations after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other authorities issued the first warnings of an incoming attack.
Emergency crews were still digging through the rubble of collapsed and charred apartment buildings in search of victims as dawn broke.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement that the deadly bombardment was in response to Ukraine’s long-range strikes on its civilian infrastructure.
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Ukraine’s increasingly frequent and large-scale attacks — described by Mr Zelensky as a 40-day blitz — have especially targeted oil refineries, causing a fuel crisis that has frustrated Russians, more than four years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
The attack killed 18 people in Kyiv and injured more than 90 others, according to Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said it was a “night of horror” in the capital.
Damage was recorded in 30 locations across the city, mainly residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.
Some 20 residential buildings were damaged, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Kyiv resident Serhii Budko said three or four ballistic missiles hit his district of the city.
“We were inside the shelter and felt the shelter shaking — the ceiling and floor, everything,” the 24-year-old told The Associated Press.
In Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, people were trapped inside a damaged nine-storey residential building and rescuers were at the scene, Mr Klitschko said.
In the Darnytskyi district, six levels of a nine-storey building collapsed.
In the Holosiivskyi district, a fire broke out on the roof of a 16-storey building, according to the Emergency Service, which said it deployed nearly 500 personnel and 100 specialised vehicles.
Russia’s General Staff chief General Valery Gerasimov reported the results of the “massive retaliatory strike” to Mr Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The bombardment was “exclusively against military or military-linked targets”, Mr Peskov said.
Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
Mr Sybiha said in April that domestic production meets up to 75% of Ukraine’s military needs and accounts for up to 95% of long-range strikes against Russia. The location of the factories making those weapons is secret.
Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region a Russian guided bomb strike killed a seven-year-old girl and wounded four other people, including an 11-year-old girl, all members of the same family, regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said.
The attack used “high-precision long-range weapons” and drones on “military industry facilities and fuel and energy complexes in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as military airfield infrastructure in four other regions of Ukraine,” the Russian Defence Ministry’s statement said.
It published a list of targets it said the barrage hit, mostly plants manufacturing and assembling Ukrainian drones, missiles and components.
Russia fired 74 missiles, 24 of them ballistic, and 496 drones of various types in the attack, Ukraine’s air force said.
Ukraine’s air defences have improved throughout the war, especially in countering Russian drones.
But ballistic missiles are harder to stop, and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly pleaded with partner countries to supply more Patriot missile systems that offer the best protection.
Mr Sybiha urged countries not to delay decisions on supplying air defence systems and missiles.
He rejected any Russian attempts to justify the strikes as retaliation for Ukraine’s long-range attacks, saying Ukraine was exercising its right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter while Russia remained the aggressor.
Mr Sybiha said on X that the death toll may rise as rescue teams continue their work.
Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries overnight in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, starting a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Also, Ukrainian forces struck a railway bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, it said.
The bridge was used by Russian forces to transport personnel, weapons and military supplies, according to the General Staff.
Ukraine’s recent success with drone strikes that keep Russian troops pinned down on the front line, disrupt Russian supply lines in the rear and damage oil facilities have brought a significant change in the war, Western analysts say.
“Russia’s spring-summer 2026 offensive has failed to achieve operationally significant gains thus far, and Russian forces’ rate of advance in June 2026 (was) a fraction of the rate of advance that Russian forces achieved in June 2025,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late on Wednesday.
