Zelenskyy says Russian missile strike on Kyiv building killed 24, including children
A Russian missile tore through a Kyiv apartment block, killing 24 people, including three children, after rescuers spent more than a day digging through the rubble.
A Russian missile ripped through a nine-story apartment block in Kyiv, killing 24 people, including three children, and wounding 48 others in one of the deadliest strikes on the capital since the start of the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said emergency workers finished digging through the rubble after more than a day, underscoring the scale of the destruction and the number of people who had been trapped inside.
The strike hit a corner building in Kyiv’s Darnytsia neighborhood and, earlier reporting on the attack said, smashed the entrance so completely that residents could not get out. All 18 apartments in the building were destroyed. The damage turned a residential block into a collapsed ruin, a stark example of how Russia’s campaign has repeatedly pushed the war into the daily life of the capital.
Ukraine’s air force said the barrage was Russia’s biggest against the country since the February 2022 full-scale invasion. Ukrainian emergency services said the wider assault on Kyiv and other cities was part of one of the largest two-day air attacks since the war began, a reminder that the apartment strike was not an isolated hit but part of a broader wave of pressure on civilian infrastructure.
Zelenskyy said 48 people were wounded in Kyiv, including two children. He later laid red roses at the rubble and called for Moscow to be punished, as rescue crews continued working through shattered concrete and twisted debris. The death toll and the images from the site are likely to sharpen the argument in Western capitals over how to respond to repeated Russian strikes on homes, not just military targets, in Ukraine’s largest city.
The attack also came after a May 9-11 ceasefire proposal that U.S. President Donald Trump said he had asked Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin to observe. Instead of easing, the aerial campaign intensified, deepening pressure on Ukraine’s air defenses and on residents of Kyiv who have lived through repeated nights of sirens, explosions and collapsing buildings. For many in the capital, the message of such strikes is as clear as the physical damage: Russia remains willing to use mass violence to wear down urban life, test Ukrainian morale and challenge the resolve of foreign backers.
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