Waves of drone and missile attacks targeted Kyiv overnight into Friday in the largest aerial attack since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began more than three years ago, injuring 23 people and inflicting severe damage across multiple districts of the capital in a seven-hour onslaught.
Russia launched 550 drones and missiles across Ukraine during the night, the country’s air force said. The majority were Shahed drones, but Russia also launched 11 missiles in the attack.
“It was a harsh, sleepless night,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Alya Shahlai, a 23-year-old wedding photographer, said her home was destroyed in the attack.
“We were all in the [basement] shelter because it was so loud; staying home would have been suicidal,” she told The Associated Press. “We went down 10 minutes before, and then there was a loud explosion and the lights went out in the shelter. People were panicking.”
Throughout the night, AP journalists in Kyiv heard the constant buzzing of drones overhead and the sound of explosions and intense machine gunfire as Ukrainian forces tried to intercept the aerial assault.
At least 14 people were hospitalized, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
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Russia is escalating its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities. Less than a week ago, Russia launched its previous largest aerial assault of the war. That strategy has coincided with a new push by Russia’s bigger forces along parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre front line, where Ukrainian troops are under severe pressure.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had successfully struck military targets in Kyiv, while also capturing the village of Predtechyne in the eastern Donetsk region.
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The attack on Kyiv began the same day a phone call took place between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy called the timing of the strikes a deliberate signal that Moscow has no intention of ending the war.
Trump said he would call Zelenskyy on Friday. U.S.-led international peace efforts have been fruitless so far.
The U.S. has paused some shipments of military aid to Ukraine, including crucial air defence missiles. Ukraine’s main European backers are considering how they can help pick up the slack. Zelenskyy says plans are afoot to build up Ukraine’s domestic arms industry, but scaling up will take time.
When asked if he made any progress with Putin on a deal to end the fighting in Ukraine, Trump said: “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all.”
“I’m not happy about that. I’m not happy about that,” Trump said of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
According to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, the Russian leader emphasized that Moscow will seek to achieve its goals in Ukraine and remove the “root causes” of the conflict.
“Russia will not back down from these goals,” Ushakov told reporters after the call.
Putin has argued he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 to fend off a threat to Russia posed by Ukraine’s push to join NATO and to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine — arguments rejected by Kyiv and its allies. He insisted any prospective peace deal must see Ukraine abandon its NATO bid and recognize Russia’s territorial gains.
Russia says 1 person killed, substations damaged
In the overnight fighting, emergency services reported damage in at least five of Kyiv’s 10 districts.
In addition to the capital, the Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Kyiv regions also sustained damage in the overnight attacks, Zelenskyy said.
In Russia, Ukraine launched a drone attack on the Sergiyev Posad district, near Moscow, early on Friday, injuring one person and damaging power infrastructure, the head of the district said.
Oksana Yerokhanova wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app that at least four explosions were recorded throughout the district — some 75 kilometres from the Kremlin — and that a power substation was damaged, leaving parts of the district without electricity.
In the southern Russian region of Rostov, a woman was killed as a result of Ukraine’s drone attack, which damaged several apartment buildings and forced the evacuation of scores of people from their homes, the acting governor of the region said Friday.
The scale of the attack on Russia was not immediately known. There was no comment from Ukraine.
In general, Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts and are in response to continuous Russian strikes on Ukraine.
On Thursday, the Russian military confirmed the killing of Maj.-Gen. Mikhail Gudkov, deputy head of the Russian Navy.
Gudkov — who was handed a top military honour by Putin in February and appointed to the top naval post in March — was killed on Wednesday “during combat work in one of the border districts of Kursk region,” which is next to Ukraine, Russia’s Defence Ministry said.
Unofficial Russian and Ukrainian military Telegram channels had earlier reported that Gudkov had been killed, along with other servicemen and officers, in a Ukrainian missile attack on a command post in Russia’s Kursk region with a U.S.-made HIMARS missile.
Reuters could not independently verify how Gudkov, 42, died or what he was doing in Kursk.