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Russia launched a massive aerial attack on Kyiv overnight into Sunday with strike drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, killing one person and wounding at least 24, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced, as explosions rang out across the city for hours and residents sheltered in underground metro stations.
Klitschko reported that damage had been recorded in every district of Kyiv, including strikes on residential buildings, a student dormitory, a car service center, and a shopping mall.
One person was killed after a nine-story residential building in the central Shevchenko district was hit. Three people are in serious condition among those hospitalized. More than 40 locations across the city were damaged, the city's military administrator Tymur Tkachenko said.
"The capital has come under a mass ballistic missile attack," Tkachenko wrote on Telegram, urging all residents to remain in shelters.
Ukraine's Interior Ministry detailed strikes across six Kyiv districts.
In Shevchenko, a nine-story building was hit between the eighth and ninth floors, killing one person, and a five-story residential building also sustained damage. A business center and a market were struck.
In the Darnytsky district, a dormitory roof caught fire, and 10 residents were evacuated while 12 more were rescued.
In Dniprovskyi, a private home and a garage cooperative were hit.
In Desnyanskyi, a shopping center and a supermarket building were struck.
In Solomyansky, the 23rd floor of a 24-story building was partially destroyed and warehouse facilities in an industrial zone were damaged.
In Obolonsky, two residential buildings and a hardware store caught fire.
Several people were trapped inside an air raid shelter at a school in Shevchenko after a strike blocked its entrance with debris. "More people were reported stuck inside a shelter at a business center in the same neighborhood," Klitschko said.
Nataliia Zvarych, a 62-year-old resident who spent hours sheltering in a Kyiv metro station, told Reuters: "We walked under the explosions; we saw things flying up there. It was terrifying, scary. We have been sitting here for more than three hours now, listening to the explosions up there."
In Cherkasy, a separate Russian drone strike wounded 11 people, including two children, sparking fires across multiple floors of a nine-story residential building.
Both Ukrainian and U.S. authorities had warned of an incoming attack hours before it materialized. On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian, U.S. and European intelligence sources indicated Russia was preparing a strike with the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said it had "received information concerning a potentially significant air attack that may occur at any time over the next 24 hours."
The Ukrainian Air Force later warned on Telegram that an Oreshnik launch had been detected. No immediate reports were confirming whether the Oreshnik was used.
Russia has previously struck Ukraine twice with the Oreshnik, a missile Putin has described as impossible to intercept due to its velocity exceeding 10 times the speed of sound.
"We count on a response from the world, and on a response that is not post factum, but preventive. Pressure must be put on Moscow so that it does not expand the war," Zelenskyy said on X.
The attack followed Putin's explicit order last week for the defense ministry to prepare retaliatory options after Ukraine's drone strikes in Russian-occupied Luhansk.
Russia says a Ukrainian drone barrage overnight Thursday to Friday struck a college dormitory in Starobilsk, killing 18 people, most of them young women born between 2003 and 2008, and wounding 42, with three more believed trapped under rubble.
Russia's foreign ministry had warned those responsible would face "inevitable and severe punishment."
Ukraine denied targeting civilians, saying it had struck the headquarters of Russia's Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies, an elite unit that has pioneered Russian drone targeting. Ukrainian officials accused Russian media of circulating "manipulative information" about the strike.
Ukraine has significantly expanded its long-range drone capabilities in recent weeks. Earlier this week it struck a Russian drone pilot training camp in the occupied town of Snizhne, with the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces claiming 65 cadets and an instructor were killed.
Ukraine also struck a Russian security service headquarters and an air defense system in the Kherson region, and a chemical plant in Russia's Perm Krai, some 1,700 kilometers from the front, that Zelenskyy said supplies Russia's military with materials for aircraft, drone components, missile engines and explosives.
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