Russian strikes on Ukraine kill at least 19 people

Ukraine was hit by one of the war’s most devastating overnight assaults as a huge Russian drone and missile attack killed at least 19 people in cities across the country, more than four years after the invasion began and with efforts to halt the fighting still at a standstill.

Explosions boomed across the capital through the night, while towering columns of black smoke rose over central Kyiv at first light.

More than 100 people were injured in the strikes, which tore into apartment blocks while residents slept.

“The impact happened immediately. I heard screams, and we ran quickly. I tried to jump out of the apartment to save myself,” a woman called Tetiana in Odesa, the heaviest hit city, told AFP.

“The ceilings collapsed, we were pinned by furniture. My wife and I tried to get out. She rushed to our son and screamed, ‘half his head is gone’,” he said.

In Kyiv, 19-year-old Yeva said her mother and two-year-old brother were trapped beneath a collapsed roof after a Russian drone struck their building, leaving the apartment block almost entirely destroyed.

“They were saved by a miracle, because the attic collapsed right onto them,” she told AFP.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking during a tour of Europe, asked for a minute of silence for those killed at an event in a church in the Netherlands.

“Today in Ukraine is another very hard day, a really hard night, the day after a massive Russian attack,” he said.

Smoke rises above apartment buildings after the Russian strikes in Kyiv

Writing on social media, he said the attack “has proven Russia does not deserve any easing of global policy or lifting of sanctions.”

EU council chief Antonio Costa said Russia had chosen to “deliberately terrorise civilians”, denouncing the overnight bombardment as a “horrendous attack against civilian targets.”

I condemn the brutal Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities overnight which killed and wounded many civilians. Among those killed was a 12-year-old boy. Yet again, Russia shows it has no interest in peace. We must increase pressure on Putin and give Ukraine the support it needs.

— Helen McEntee TD (@HMcEntee) April 16, 2026

Since the war began, Moscow has launched hundreds of drones at its neighbour on almost a nightly basis, while Kyiv has responded with repeated strikes on Russian energy facilities and military sites.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions from their homes, making it the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Peace talks in limbo

The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 659 drones and 44 missiles in an attack that began yesterday during the day and continued until dawn.

The Russian army said it had “carried out a massive strike” against Ukrainian military and energy targets.

Throughout the invasion, Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, despite thousands of deaths in strikes that have hit apartments, hospitals, train stations and other civilian infrastructure across the country.

The latest deadly barrage came as US-led negotiations on ending the war have been pushed aside by the conflict in the Middle East.

Even before that, talks had yielded little progress, with no sign that Russia was prepared to soften its hardline territorial and political demands, which Kyiv has rejected as tantamount to surrender.

Ukraine, for its part, has intensified its own long-range drone and missile strikes inside Russia.

Officials said those overnight attacks killed two people, including a child, in southern Russia.

A 14-year-old girl and a young woman were killed in the Black Sea city of Tuapse after a wave of drones hit homes and a music school, local governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.

Five other people were wounded.

A damaged residential building following a Russian strike in Kyiv

The Russian army said its forces had intercepted 207 Ukrainian drones over western and southern regions of the country.

In Kyiv, four people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, and at least 62 others were wounded, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

He said several medics who had responded to an initial wave of strikes were among the injured.

AFP journalists at one strike site saw a damaged ambulance and the body of a victim lying in the street beneath a thermal blanket.

Mr Klitschko said rescuers pulled a child alive from the rubble of an 18-storey building that collapsed after a Russian drone slammed into it.

In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, five more people were killed and another 33 wounded, according to Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the regional administration, writing on Telegram.

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