# Kyiv counts dead after one of Russia’s heaviest recent attacks on the city

Ukrainian officials said one of Russia’s largest recent air attacks on Kyiv killed at least 28 people and injured more than 100, as rescuers continued to pull bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment block.

The strike lasted more than nine hours, sending residents into shelters before midnight and keeping them there until after sunrise. Ukrainian authorities said Russia hit 27 locations in the city. Kyiv’s mayor said more than 40 apartments were destroyed in the Solomyanskyi district alone, where a ballistic missile struck a nine-storey residential building and a drone smashed into an apartment block.

Ukraine’s interior minister said the country had been hit by 440 drones and 32 missiles in the overnight attack. Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted Ukraine’s military-industrial complexes and claimed all its targets had been hit. The BBC report was based on Ukrainian officials’ account of the civilian damage and the continuing rescue operation.

The human toll was still changing as emergency workers searched the wreckage. Authorities said the death count rose as bodies were recovered and identified. There were also two fatalities in Odesa, another city hit in the same wave of strikes. Kyiv’s mayor said a 62-year-old US citizen was among those killed, and the US State Department later confirmed the death of an American citizen.

The wider pattern is familiar. Russian forces have intensified air attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks by launching large waves of drones and decoys intended to overwhelm air defences. During the Kyiv strike, the sound of anti-aircraft machine guns could be heard as Ukrainian units tried to shoot down incoming drones.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “pure terrorism” and accused Vladimir Putin of carrying it out because he believed he could afford to keep the war going. He said the powerful of the world should not look away and argued that the terrorists, not peaceful people, should be made to feel pain.

The attack also disrupted the work of rescue teams. Officials said sirens sounded again later in the morning, forcing responders to pause. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said residential buildings, critical infrastructure and educational facilities had been hit.

This was more than a battlefield exchange. It was a mass-casualty strike on a capital city, with families trapped under concrete and firefighters, medics and rescue crews racing against time.

Sources

  • BBC News, sourceId 5666, on the casualty count, the damage in Kyiv and Odesa, and the scale of the attack.
  • BBC News, sourceId 5666, on Ukrainian and Russian statements about the strikes.