At least three people were killed and more than 30 injured in a large Russian drone-and-missile attack across Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukraine's air force counted 619 aerial weapons in the overnight barrage.
Zelensky said the Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy and Kharkiv regions were targeted. He accused Moscow of deliberately trying to frighten civilians and destroy infrastructure. Residential neighbourhoods and civilian facilities were among the locations hit, he said.
A high-rise residential building in Dnipro sustained a direct missile strike. The president said the weapon carried cluster munitions. BBC verification cited in the supplied report matched footage of a missile in flight and an impact with still photographs showing a badly damaged building at the same location. That visual evidence supported the reported strike, though the excerpt did not provide a detailed breakdown of the casualties by region.
Russia's Defence Ministry described its operation as a “massive strike” using precision weapons against military-industrial facilities. The two sides' descriptions of the intended targets differed sharply. The evidence packet did not independently establish the purpose of each weapon or assess all sites hit.
The overnight exchanges extended into Russia. Samara regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said four people were killed and one injured in a Ukrainian drone attack. Ukraine's military said its drones struck the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Samara and damaged a second refinery in the neighbouring Saratov region. Those facilities belong to a class of industrial targets Kyiv has increasingly attacked because of their role in Russia's wartime economy.
Long-range drone operations had already become a defining part of the conflict. A sustained Ukrainian raid in July temporarily closed every Moscow airport, while Russia had intensified its own aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities. Earlier in September, Ukraine's main government building in Kyiv was hit by what Ukrainian authorities identified as a Russian Iskander cruise missile.
The assault occurred while diplomatic efforts had produced no ceasefire. Zelensky said he expected to meet US President Donald Trump during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Trump had hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska the previous month, but those talks did not produce an agreement to end the war.
Regional tensions were also growing after Estonia requested urgent consultations with NATO members over Russian jets that it said spent 12 minutes inside Estonian airspace. Poland and Romania had separately reported Russian drones crossing their airspace earlier in the month. Against that background, the 619-weapon attack showed that the war's long-range dimension was expanding even as negotiations remained stalled.
