A Ukrainian firefighter battles a massive blaze early Thursday at the scene of a Russian missile strike in the capital, Kyiv, where four people were among 16 killed in large scale aerial attacks on several Ukrainian cities overnight. Photo by Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA
An airborne Russian assault against Ukraine’s cities with hundreds of missiles and drones overnight killed at least 16 people and injured 98, authorities said.
The bulk of the injuries, and all but one of the fatalities, occurred in Odessa, Kyiv and Dnipro in waves of attacks in which 659 drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles were unleashed by Russian forces against more than two dozen targets, the Ukraine Air Force said.
Ukraine launched more than 200 drones in the other direction, killing two children, a 5-year-old and a 14-year-old, and injuring two adults in Tuapse in Russia’s southern Krasnodar Krai region, according to the state-run TASS news agency, which said drones were also downed over the Belgorod, Smolensk, Kursk, Bryansk and Oryol regions and Crimea.
Ukraine’s air defenses downed most of the Russian drones and missiles but the State Emergency Service said four people, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed and 48 were injured in Kyiv, nine were killed and 23 injured in the Black Sea port of Odesa and three people were killed and 27 injured in the central-eastern city of Dnipro.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, in an online post, said multiple districts of the capital were struck with public and residential buildings damaged or destroyed, including in Podilskyi, Desnyanskyi, Dniprovskyi and Obolonskyi where four paramedics were injured after repeat strikes on the location they were working in.
In Odesa, eight people were killed and 16 were injured when a multi-storey residential building was struck amid waves of strikes against the city.
The State Emergency Service said a fire broke out causing significant damage with some apartments completely destroyed. SES said other residential buildings, a port infrastructure facility and warehouses were also damaged in the strikes.
Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Oleksandr Hanzha posted on Telegram that the three people killed in Dnipro were all women, along with photos showing neighborhoods of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in flames following what he said was a “massive strike.”
There were reports of strikes on other major cities, including Kharkiv and Cherkasy, 100 miles southeast of Kharkiv, but further details were as yet unavailable.
The Ukraine Parliament’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, warned that Russia’s deadly attacks would not stop until it began to be held to account.
“The world must react decisively. Russia must be held responsible for every life taken and every destroyed fate,” he wrote on X.
The overnight attacks came a day after Zelensky warned stocks of air defense missiles — U.S.-made Patriots in particular– were running critically low, with serious consequences for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself from Russian aerial attacks.
“The situation is in such a deficit, it could not be any worse,” Zelensky told German public service television in an interview in which he said the situation in the Middle East with the Iran war was negatively impacting Ukraine’s ability to secure military aid.
Historic April moments through the years
Children race to push colored eggs across the grass during the annual Easter Egg Roll event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on April 21, 2025. Easter this year takes place on April 5. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
