Kyiv awoke to fire, smoke and shattered concrete after one of the war’s largest assaults, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to promise retaliation for Russian strikes that killed at least 21 people and injured dozens more.
Russia unleashed hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles on the capital in a barrage that ranked among the biggest attacks of the conflict.
Explosions tore through central Kyiv and echoed across the city through the night as thousands of residents fled to bomb shelters and underground metro stations.
Thick plumes of smoke rose across the skyline.
The onslaught was the deadliest to hit Kyiv since at least May, and the scale of destruction across so much of the capital was striking even in a war now in its fifth year.
Mr Zelensky, who cut short a visit to Ireland and hurried back to Ukraine, went to a site on the city’s left bank where half of a nine-storey residential block had been torn away.
He said the devastation was due in part to allies failing to deliver air defence systems they had pledged.
“If our partners had delivered on their promises in a timely manner, I think we could have saved more homes and lives today,” Mr Zelensky said.
Residents gather at the scene of a missile and drone strike in Kyiv
Smoke billows over Kyiv after the Russian air assault
The president said the “main strike was directed at Kyiv”.
“Air defence supplies for Ukraine are an absolute and critical priority,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to keep contributing to a fund for the purchase of US weapons, including Patriot air defence missiles for Ukraine.
Russia fired 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat said the number of ballistic missiles used was unusually high and that the rate of interception for them was low.
Ukraine has in recent months been grappling with shortages of Patriot missiles.
In a Telegram post, the Russian Defence Ministry said its “massive attack”, using long-range high-precision air-, land- and sea-launched weapons as well as drones, struck military and energy sites, along with airports in Kyiv and elsewhere.
Emergency services workers search through rubble in Kyiv
Moscow said the strikes were carried out in retaliation for Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory.
Kyiv, which has intensified attacks in recent weeks on Russia’s domestic fuel infrastructure, said it struck an oil refinery overnight in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, where the governor reported one person killed in an attack on an industrial facility.
The Kremlin said Russian military commanders had briefed President Vladimir Putin on the strikes, adding that Moscow would keep increasing pressure on Ukraine to pursue its war aims.
Day of mourning declared in Kyiv
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that the city would observe a day of mourning tomorrow.
He said damage had been recorded across the whole city of about three million people, with some buildings suffering severe destruction.
EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernova said that “Russia unleashed hell on Kyiv” overnight and had hit accommodation used by diplomatic personnel.
The diplomats were not hurt, but their belongings were damaged in the blaze that swept through the building, she said.
The head of the United Nations condemned the strikes and renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “strongly condemns the overnight missile and drone attacks,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure wherever they occur are a clear violation of international humanitarian law and must stop immediately.
“The Secretary General reiterates his appeal for … a full, immediate, and unconditional ceasefire.”
People packed underground stations as air raid alerts sounded
As dawn broke, emergency crews combed through the remains of what had been a nine-storey building on the left bank of the Dnipro River, which cuts through the city, while fires continued to burn around it.
City officials said more than 90 people were wounded, including children, paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station, and that some residents were still believed to be trapped inside damaged apartment blocks.
“Our house is on fire. Oleg was pulling our neighbour out of the burning house, while I was phoning all the emergency services during the explosions,” Iryna Plekhova, a Kyiv resident, said on Facebook, posting a picture of a half-destroyed apartment building with no windows.
“We do not have an apartment anymore.”
The National Institute of Biochemistry was among the many damaged sites, with its advanced biochemistry laboratory and other offices gutted in the strike.
“This is a catastrophe for medical and biological science of Ukraine,” biologist Yurii Danylovych told Reuters, saying the laboratory contained rare equipment.
Neighbouring Poland, a NATO and EU member, briefly scrambled fighter jets as a precaution.
People pick their way through mounds of rubble after Russian strikes damaged buildings
Finland also briefly imposed a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland, its defence forces said.
More pressure on Russia urged
After years in which Ukraine absorbed relentless long-range attacks from Russia, Kyiv has stepped up strikes deeper inside Russian territory in recent months, focusing mainly on energy targets.
That campaign has triggered a fuel crisis in Russia, forcing the world’s third-biggest oil producer to import gasoline from as far away as India.
Russia has answered with an intensified air offensive against Ukrainian cities, including a strike last month on a thousand-year-old Kyiv cathedral that holds deep significance for the Orthodox faith in both countries.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said only continued military support for Ukraine and greater pressure on Moscow could help halt Russian attacks.
Read more: Zelensky hopes Aughinish probe does not take a month
“Today, I will propose to sanction more entities supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex in response to the strikes,” she said in a post on X.
“The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed.”
Mr Zelensky has proposed talks with Mr Putin to end the war, which is now more than four years old, but the Kremlin leader has rejected the idea.
Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians in attacks on Kyiv and other cities since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, but says strikes on what it describes as civil infrastructure are legitimate because they weaken Ukraine’s capacity to fight.
Kyiv has also carried out attacks on Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine, though on a far smaller scale.
French court fines seized Russia-linked tanker €1m
Prosecutors said today that the owner of a Moscow-linked tanker intercepted by France in May has been fined €1 million.
The vessel is believed to be part of a fleet used to transport Russian oil in breach of Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Under a plea agreement, the tanker Tagor “will be allowed to leave French territorial waters”, prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger said of the ship, which was fined for sailing without a valid flag and for failing to obey orders.
The vessel’s owner, a company registered in the Marshall Islands, admitted guilt and was convicted by a court in the western French city of Brest under a procedure known as prior admission of guilt, France’s equivalent of a plea bargain.
The shipowner will work “to obtain a new, lawful flag as soon as possible”, the prosecutor said.
The Tagor was boarded by the French Navy on 31 May
Subject to US and EU sanctions, the Tagor has repeatedly changed flags, sailing at different times under those of Madagascar, the Marshall Islands and Panama.
It was the fourth Moscow-linked tanker intercepted at sea by France since September 2025.
A fifth tanker, the Deliver, was intercepted off Sicily last month. That vessel remains detained in southeastern France.
Several Western countries have sanctioned hundreds of ships in Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin has described the seizure of Moscow-linked vessels as “international piracy”.
