Russia launched one of its most devastating attacks on Ukraine’s capital overnight, deploying hypersonic Oreshnik missiles alongside hundreds of drones in a barrage that killed at least four people and wounded more than 100 across Kyiv and the surrounding region, officials said Sunday.
Explosions rocked the city just after 1 a.m. local time following alerts from Ukraine’s air force warning that a hypersonic ballistic missile strike was imminent. The attack marked the third time Russia has used the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile since the war began nearly four years ago.
Ukrainian authorities reported that the overnight barrage included 600 drones and 90 missiles of various types — air-launched, sea-launched, and ground-launched. Ukraine’s air force said it destroyed or jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles, with another 19 missiles failing to reach their targets.
“The capital has come under a mass ballistic missile attack,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, noting damage across 40 locations in several districts of the city, including residential buildings and civilian infrastructure.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were killed in the capital itself with 81 others wounded. The head of the surrounding Kyiv region confirmed two additional deaths there with nine people wounded.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the assault as “crazy,” noting that Russian forces targeted civilian and cultural structures, including the Museum of Chernobyl. “Every night, every morning — this is what Russian terror looks like,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
The attack came as Russia vowed to “punish” those responsible for a Ukrainian strike earlier in the week that hit a college dormitory in Starobilsk, in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region. Moscow said the strike killed at least 18 people and trapped others beneath the rubble, with 42 others wounded.
Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed the use of Oreshnik ballistic missiles alongside Iskander, Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, and Tsirkon cruise missiles in what it described as a “massive strike in response to Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure on Russian territory.”
The United States embassy in Kyiv had issued warnings of a potential major attack hours before the first explosions, urging residents to seek shelter. Emergency services worked through the night responding to fires and searching collapsed structures.
The attack is one of the largest combined drone and missile barrages in the four-year conflict, and comes as diplomatic efforts involving the United States, Iran, and Pakistan continue to unfold in the region. Western officials have watched the escalation closely, with the Oreshnik missile series representing Russia’s most visually potent demonstration of long-range strike capability in the war.
Ukrainian air defence systems, which have improved significantly over the course of the war through Western support, managed to intercept a large portion of the incoming threats, though the sheer scale of the barrage overwhelmed certain segments of the city’s defensive network.
Firefighters battled blazes across multiple districts throughout Sunday morning as rescue teams worked to clear debris from residential buildings. The full extent of the destruction was still being assessed as officials compiled damage reports across the capital.
