A building in Kyiv is engulfed in flames on Thursday after being struck during an major airborne attack by Russian forces on the Ukrainian capital overnight. Photo courtesy Security Service of Ukraine/EPA
A second consecutive night of Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least two people and injured 24, authorities said.
Residential, healthcare, education, commercial and transport infrastructure was damaged across eight districts of the capital, including Podilskyi, where a 22-year-old woman police officer and a 68-year-old woman were killed, Kyiv Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said in a social media update.
“House-to-house inspections of the affected building are underway with the police checking whether anyone was left without help. About 400 rescuers and 90 units of fire and rescue, engineering and robotic equipment of the State Emergency Service are involved in clearing the rubble and dealing with the consequences of the shelling,” he said.
Tkachenko said apartment blocks, vehicles, warehouses, offices and other non-residential buildings were burning.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that apartment buildings in Shevchenkivskyi and Darnytskyi were set ablaze, gas stations and garages damaged, and a primary healthcare center “almost completely destroyed” in Podilskyi district.
The attack started shortly after 1 a.m. local time when explosions were heard and a swarm of Shahed-type attack drones was detected over the Pechersk district in old Kyiv, kicking off a three-hour-long intense bombardment in which the city was also targeted with ballistic missiles.
The Ukraine Air Force said 18 ballistic, cruise and S-300 guided missiles, mostly targeting Kyiv, were part of a much larger attack targeting the Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv regions that involved almost 400 real and decoy drones in an effort to throw off Ukrainian air defenses by swamping them.
However, air defenses succeeded in downing 14 of the missiles and while more than 350 drones were shot down, jammed or went the wrong way, at least two people, a man and a woman, were injured in the southern province of Kherson.
“This is a clear escalation of terror by Russia — hundreds of ‘shaheds’ every night, constant strikes, and massive attacks on Ukrainian cities,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X.
“This demands that we speed things up. Sanctions must be imposed faster, and pressure on Russia must be strong enough that they truly feel the consequences of their terror. There’s a need for quicker action from our partners in investing in weapons production and advancing technology,” Zelensky wrote.
The latest attacks came as the United Nations released figures for June showing 232 people were killed and 1,343 injured in Ukraine due to enemy action, the highest number of civilian casualties in any month since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
