Russian ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least nine people and wounded more than two dozen others in the early hours of Saturday, with attacks tearing into residential buildings across the Ukrainian capital and triggering widespread fires and power outages. Ukraine's State Emergency Service confirmed that four of the wounded were children, and that 105 people had been rescued from the rubble by Friday morning. Residents described the chaos in their neighbourhoods: "Everything was smashed, the windows, everything," said 75-year-old Kateryna Kravchenko, who lives in the affected Solomyanskyi district. Another resident said simply: "You can't stay here after something like this."
The attacks struck five districts of Kyiv, with the heaviest casualties recorded in Darnytskyi district, where seven people were killed and 14 wounded. In Solomyanskyi district, a five-storey residential building was partially destroyed, killing two and injuring eight. In Shevchenkivskyi, a residential building was partly collapsed, trapping residents inside. AFP journalists on the ground reported hearing more than 10 consecutive explosions, setting off car alarms across the city. Russia's defence ministry described the assault as a "massive strike" targeting "military-industrial complex enterprises and logistics centres" in the Kyiv region.
The attack came just two days after a large-scale Russian strike across Ukraine killed at least eight people, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine. That assault also saw a suspected Russian cruise missile enter Polish airspace — an incident that drew sharp international attention. June had already been declared the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since April 2022, according to the United Nations.
Ukraine has simultaneously escalated its own retaliatory strikes on Russian territory, partly as a means of pressuring Moscow towards negotiations after nearly four and a half years of war. Russia said its air defences intercepted 274 Ukrainian drones overnight. A logistics facility belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries in Volgograd also caught fire following an overnight attack; Kyiv has accused the company of storing drone components for the Russian military.
The strikes intensify the pressure on Ukraine's allies to provide air defence support. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Saturday that the attacks demonstrated the country "urgently needs additional air and missile defence systems and interceptors." President Volodymyr Zelensky, who met with US President Donald Trump earlier in the week, said Trump had agreed to licence Patriot missile production to Ukraine — though Trump subsequently said Washington would need to be "very careful" about granting such a licence. Zelensky has described air defence, particularly interceptor missiles for Patriot systems capable of countering ballistic threats, as a top priority.