Russia Pounds Kyiv With Record 1,600 Drones and Missiles in 30-Hour Aerial Assault
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the bombardment, which collapsed an apartment block in the Darnytsia district and killed at least one person, was the largest two-day air attack of the war.
Russia launched more than 1,600 drones and 56 ballistic and cruise missiles at Ukraine over a thirty-hour window beginning Wednesday morning, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Thursday "the largest aerial attack of the entire war." Kyiv bore the brunt of the second night of strikes, with explosions echoing across six districts of the capital starting around 3 a.m. local time and a residential apartment building partially collapsing in the eastern Darnytsia district, trapping at least four people in the rubble. Ukrainian emergency officials said one civilian was confirmed dead and 31 were injured, with rescuers still pulling residents from the wreckage at midday.
The barrage came hours after a rare daytime drone assault on the capital killed at least six people on Wednesday and shut down sections of the Kyiv metro for the first time since the early weeks of the 2022 invasion. The combined two-day total — which Ukraine's air force says includes 800 Iranian-designed Shahed drones launched at roughly 20 regions before the missile waves arrived — surpasses the previous record, set during a 24-hour stretch in March, by more than 200 weapons. United24 Media, an outlet funded by the Ukrainian government, called the assault "a deliberate effort to overwhelm air defenses by sheer volume."
Air defense crews around Kyiv said they shot down or jammed roughly 85 percent of the incoming threats, but the missiles that broke through caused widespread damage. The Darnytsia apartment block, a nine-story Soviet-era building, lost a vertical strip of its facade after what residents described as a direct hit by a ballistic missile. Footage from Ukrainian state broadcaster Suspilne showed rescuers using cranes and concrete saws to free survivors. Schools and kindergartens in three districts were ordered to switch to remote learning for the rest of the week, and the city's main thermal power plant, TEC-6, was knocked offline.
Zelensky, in a televised address Thursday afternoon, said the strikes underscored the urgent need for additional Patriot interceptor missiles and accelerated delivery of the NASAMS systems pledged earlier this year by the United States and Norway. "Russia is using up its stockpiles at a pace that we did not expect, and they are doing so because they know our shield is incomplete," he said. He also called on the Trump administration to revisit a stalled package of long-range ATACMS missiles that the Pentagon paused last month while the U.S. is consumed with the war against Iran.
The escalation comes against the backdrop of Trump's ongoing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where Ukraine was reportedly raised as a topic in the closed-door morning session. The Kremlin, which has not formally responded to the casualty figures, told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the strikes were "a measured response" to Ukrainian long-range drone raids on Russian oil refineries last week. The European Union's foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said in Brussels that the bloc would accelerate the seventh tranche of the European Peace Facility, releasing €1.5 billion in additional military aid to Kyiv as early as next Monday.
Originally reported by NPR.