Russia launched one of its most intense air assaults on Ukraine in weeks during the early hours of Monday, killing at least nine people across the country and setting fire to a celebrated medieval monastery in the capital, Kyiv. Waves of drones and missiles struck residential buildings and infrastructure, leaving around 140,000 people in Kyiv without electricity and sending residents into underground shelters as air raid alerts covered most of the country.
Among the most striking targets was the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in 1051 and one of the most sacred places in Orthodox Christianity. Known in English as the Monastery of the Caves — a reference to its extensive underground tunnel system — the complex is distinguished by its gilded domes and white facades on the banks of the Dnipro River. Towering flames engulfed the roof of its Dormition Cathedral, a landmark of the 11th century. "The roof of one of the holiest places in the Christian world is burning," wrote Metropolitan Epiphanius, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko called it "a brutal assault on our people and our heritage," adding: "This is the true face of Russia's Orthodox values." Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine would urgently pursue all relevant procedures at UNESCO and other international bodies in response.
Four people were killed and 23 injured in Kyiv, with damage reported at 16 locations across the capital. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast, five emergency rescue workers were killed and five more wounded in what appeared to be a deliberate double-tap strike that targeted responders after an initial blast. Three people, including a child, were wounded in the city of Sumy. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone strike on Tula, an industrial city south of Moscow, killed three people and wounded three others, including a one-year-old child. Poland scrambled fighter jets and placed ground-based air defence systems on alert as a precautionary measure, though its armed forces later confirmed no violation of Polish airspace had occurred.
The strikes followed high-level diplomatic contact between all sides and the United States. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken with US President Donald Trump ahead of a G7 summit in France this week to discuss efforts to end the more than four-year war. The Kremlin confirmed that Putin also spoke with Trump, who conveyed that ending the conflict was vital and that he was ready to help. Progress toward a peace settlement has been slow, however, with US mediators also heavily focused on a separate framework agreement reached with Iran, expected to be signed in Switzerland on Friday.
The scale and symbolism of the attack drew immediate international condemnation. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra holds particular historic resonance: for centuries it was a major seat of the Russian Orthodox Church, but its governance shifted to the newly established Orthodox Church of Ukraine following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and became more politically charged after Ukraine's security services raided the complex in 2022 amid fears of Russian espionage. The attack on the site, Ukrainian officials argued, underscores the nature of the conflict — not merely as a military campaign but as an assault on Ukrainian cultural and religious identity.