Russian missile and drone barrage kills at least 22 across Ukraine, including Kyiv and Odesa

# Russian missile and drone barrage kills at least 22 across Ukraine, including Kyiv and Odesa

Ukrainian officials say a large Russian missile and drone attack early on April 16 killed at least 22 people and injured 131 across the country, with Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipro among the hardest-hit cities.

The Kyiv Independent reported that Russian forces launched a broad overnight strike using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. Ukrainian air defense said it downed most of the incoming drones and many missiles, but local authorities still reported severe casualties and destruction in multiple cities.

In Kyiv, at least four people, including a 12-year-old child, were killed and 48 more were injured, according to the State Emergency Service. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 26 of the wounded were hospitalized. The report says emergency medics were among the victims, underscoring that the attack reached civilian response teams as well as ordinary residents.

Odesa was also badly hit. The regional governor said at least nine people were killed and 23 wounded in the port city after strikes hit critical and civilian infrastructure. A separate drone attack on a multi-story apartment building in Odesa killed one person earlier in the night. In Dnipro, officials reported at least four dead and 34 wounded, with some of the injured still hospitalized later in the day.

The report also records casualties in other parts of the country. In Donetsk Oblast, six people were wounded; in Kharkiv and the surrounding oblast, four were wounded; in Zaporizhzhia, a woman was killed; in Kherson Oblast, two people were killed and 11 were wounded, including children; and in Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts, further drone attacks caused additional injuries. Together, those reports show a single night of strikes cascading into casualties across central, southern and eastern Ukraine.

The evidence provided does not support every detail of the military objectives behind the attack, but it does show the scale of the bombardment and the breadth of the damage. The Air Force said it faced 18 ballistic missiles, 20 Kh-101 cruise missiles, five Iskander-K cruise missiles and 659 drones in the overnight attack, a reminder of how dense and sustained Russian strikes have become.

What emerges from the supplied reporting is a familiar pattern: mass bombardment, overwhelmed local services, and death tolls that rise as officials continue counting. The numbers may still change, but the scale of the April 16 attack was already clear by midday: one of the deadliest single-day Russian strikes of the year.