Russia launched a nationwide missile-and-drone assault that killed seven people, injured 47 and again placed Ukraine's energy network under severe pressure, according to Ukrainian emergency and government officials.
Air alerts began shortly before 6 a.m. and lasted nearly eight hours in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack involved more than 100 missiles and about 100 drones. A later Ukrainian military tally recorded 236 aerial targets and said air defences destroyed 102 missiles and 99 drones. The two figures were issued at different stages of the response, while officials were still assessing the attack.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said 15 of Ukraine's 24 regions were targeted, with critical civilian infrastructure and energy facilities among the main objectives. Explosions were reported across a wide arc that included Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Vinnytsia and several western regions. The State Emergency Service said almost 740 rescuers were involved before operations concluded that evening. Four children were among the wounded; the youngest was less than one year old.
Fatalities were reported in several regions rather than at one site. Local officials said a person died in Lutsk after an apartment building was damaged, a 69-year-old man was killed in Dnipropetrovsk region, a man died when a private home was hit in Zaporizhzhia region, and deaths were also recorded in Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions. Other areas reported injuries and damage to homes and infrastructure.
The consequences extended beyond the strike sites. Private energy company DTEK introduced emergency power cuts across the country shortly after 9 a.m. Kyiv's mayor reported outages in several districts and water-supply problems on the capital's right bank. Energy facilities were also damaged in Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions. An adviser to the presidential office said the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant was hit, although the regional administration later said the facility had not suffered critical damage.
Ukraine's grid had already endured repeated Russian attacks since March and was using scheduled blackouts to balance supply and demand. Those restrictions had recently eased, but the August 26 barrage forced operators to reinstate rolling cuts. DTEK said outages would continue the next day in Kyiv and the Odesa, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions while the system was stabilised.
Russia's Defence Ministry said it targeted electricity substations and gas-compression facilities with long-range weapons and strike drones. The Kyiv Independent said it could not independently confirm either Moscow's account that all designated targets were hit or the full Ukrainian interception figures. The verified human toll and widespread infrastructure disruption, however, showed the scale of an assault Ukrainian officials described as the largest against the energy system since the full-scale invasion began.
