Russia unleashes missile and drone barrage on Kyiv, buildings hit

Russian ballistic missiles and drones slammed Kyiv overnight, leaving a nine-story residential building collapsed in Desnyanskyi district and setting a hotel roof on fire in central Shevchenkivskyi. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital was under attack from ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, while AFP journalists in central and eastern Kyiv heard more than a dozen explosions.

The strikes hit multiple parts of the city at once. In Holosiivskyi district, the roof of a multi-story residential building burned. In Shevchenkivskyi, flames tore through the roof of a hotel on Shevchenko Boulevard. In Desnyanskyi, the collapse of a nine-story residential building left people trapped inside as emergency crews worked through the debris. Residents fled underground metro stations as air-raid alerts stayed in effect across the city.

Five healthcare workers were wounded in Shevchenkivskyi, one critically. The damage to a hotel, apartment blocks and medical staff points to the way Russia’s overnight barrages continue to push civilian infrastructure, not just military targets, into the center of the conflict. Kyiv has spent much of the war cycling between sirens, shelter and repair, but the scale of this latest assault again showed how quickly a night can turn into a search-and-rescue operation.

The attack also came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cut short a visit to Dublin after warning that intelligence pointed to a Russian “massive attack.” He had been in Ireland for the start of the country’s six-month turn leading the rotating European Union presidency. The same day, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had struck targets inside Russia, including an oil refinery in Ufa, a military complex in the Penza region and a satellite communications center in the Moscow region.

That exchange fits a pattern that has defined the war for more than four years, with Russia repeatedly launching combined missile-and-drone strikes on Ukrainian cities and Ukraine answering with deeper strikes inside Russia. Kyiv has been hit repeatedly in recent months, including a June 2, 2026 attack that killed at least 22 people in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, and a July 2025 barrage described as one of the largest aerial attacks on the capital since the war began. Each new raid adds pressure on Ukraine’s air defenses, its emergency services and the civilians who keep returning to metro platforms when the sirens go off.