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Massive attack on Kyiv comes hours after Ukraine said Putin wanted to capture the capital again
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At least 21 people have been killed as Russia launched a major aerial attack on Kyiv overnight, with several residential buildings set ablaze across the Ukrainian capital.
Another 86 people were injured in the Russian drone and missile barrage. A hotel in Kyiv’s central boulevard was also on fire, officials said.
Moscow said it had hit military and energy facilities around Kyiv, as well as military airports in several other regions, in retaliation for Ukraine’s attack on civil infrastructure.
The attack comes hours after president Volodymyr Zelensky warned Russia was planning a massive night-time attack and said he was cutting short his visit to Dublin for the start of Ireland’s six-month term in the rotating presidency of the EU.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi had also said Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to find ways in which Russia can launch new offensive operations on Ukraine to capture Kyiv.
These include Russian offensives launched from Belarusian territory to capture the Ukrainian capital and its surrounding areas, Syrskyi said.
European NATO allies have largely filled the gaps left by the United States in the alliance’s defence plans, NATO’s top commander said on Thursday.
US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich added that the bloc was looking at workarounds to address the remaining shortfalls in a few areas.
“Most may not know – although there was some reporting overnight about this – that in a matter of weeks, European allies have largely filled the gaps left by U.S. reductions to the NATO Force Model,” he said.
“And in those few areas where they haven’t, where they do not currently have a like capability to replace, we are looking at alternate capabilities with matching effect.”
Citing a NATO source, Reuters reported on Wednesday that NATO will announce at next week’s Ankara summit that its European members have filled almost all the gaps left by the United States in the alliance’s defence plans.
The death toll in Russia’s huge attack on Kyiv has increased to 21, emergency services said.
Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in the early hours on Thursday, wounding scores more and damaging around 130 buildings in one of the biggest attacks of the war.
Multiple explosions shook central Kyiv and reverberated across the capital throughout the night as thousands of residents rushed to bomb shelters and underground metro stations. Huge columns of smoke filled the skyline.
The attack was the deadliest in Kyiv since at least May, and the wide spread of destruction across the breadth of the capital had little precedent even in a war now in its fifth year.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, who cut short his visit to Ireland and rushed home, visited a site on the city’s left bank where a nine-storey residential building was half destroyed. He blamed the destruction in part on a failure of allies to deliver promised air defenses.
“If our partners had delivered on their promises in a timely manner, I think we could have saved more homes and lives today,” said Zelenskiy, who looked tired and visibly frustrated. “All we ask of our partners is simply to do what we’ve agreed on. We’re not even asking for more.”
A Ukrainian drone attack injured two people travelling aboard a tourist bus from the Belarusian capital Minsk to the Russian Black Sea resort town of Anapa on Thursday, Russian state media reported.
The government in Russia’s Bryansk region, on the borders of Ukraine and Belarus, told Sputnik Belarus news agency that two drivers suffered minor injuries in the attack, which occurred at the Krasniy Kamen border crossing between Russia and Belarus.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Bryansk and the neighbouring Kursk region regularly come under Ukrainian shelling, resulting in injuries and deaths of local residents and damage to local infrastructure.
Russia accused Ukraine of conducting a deadly drone strike on a bus carrying Belarusian schoolchildren in a separate incident in the Bryansk region last month. Ukraine’s military denied attacking the bus, which was transporting members of a youth soccer team from Belarus to southern Russia.
A senior Ukrainian defence official, Rustem Umerov, and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have held talks in the past two days, president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.
Speaking at one of the sites targeted in a devastating Russian attack on Kyiv as rescuers sifted through rubble, Mr Zelensky said he still hoped Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff would visit Ukraine even though US-backed peace efforts to end the war have stalled for months.
Mr Zelensky added that he hoped to have a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit in the Turkish capital Ankara next week.
Ukraine has failed to deliver promised drone technology despite Poland’s military support and willingness to transfer MiG-29 fighter jets, Polish defence minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told Polish radio broadcaster Trojka on Thursday.
Poland has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022, providing military aid and serving as a key logistics hub for Western assistance.
However, relations have periodically been strained by disputes over historical issues and agricultural imports.
The latest tensions come after Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of Poland’s highest state honour amid a dispute over a Ukrainian military unit named after insurgents Warsaw blames for massacres of Poles during World War Two.
Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Thursday that discussions on the transfer of the remaining MiG-29 fighter jets to Kyiv in exchange for access to Ukrainian drone technology had been going on for months.
“Initially, they agreed to such a resolution, but today they are not honouring the agreement,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
“If Ukraine is already able to sell drones to Kuwait and generate revenue from it while at war, then it is capable of reciprocating to those who provide their equipment and—at times, symbolically—sharing its own capabilities,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Russian troops in some areas of the Ukrainian frontline can expect to live for between 20 to 35 minutes due to rising drone attacks, according to an estimate from Russian military bloggers.
The estimate, cited by Oxford historian Peter Frankopan in a report for Foreign Policy, lays bare the increasingly dangerous conditions for the Russian army as Ukraine evolves its drone capabilities.
Moscow has been accused of employing a ‘meat-grinder’ strategy, in which it sends vast numbers of troops to the Ukrainian frontline in an attempt to slowly grind down Kyiv’s heavily-fortified defences.
But with drones now dominating the war, Russia is losing men at a fast rate, with an average of 30,000 monthly casualties in 2026. Some estimates even suggest Russia is suffering eight men killed or wounded for every one lost by Kyiv.
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Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that its forces have taken the village of Pyskunivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The Independent was not able to independently verify the battlefield report – but we’ll bring you more when we have it.
Germany’s foreign ministry condemned Russia’s major strike on Kyiv on Thursday, stating their condemnation was in the strongest possible terms.
In a statement, it vowed to continue supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “shows no willingness to negotiate,” said the ministry in a statement, adding that continued backing for Ukraine would be the focus of next week’s Nato summit.
German federal prosecutors has said that a Ukrainian national tied to the Nord Stream pipeline blasts has been charged with being an accomplice to a war crime, disruption of public services, causing an explosion and destroying structures.
Serhii K, as the suspect is known under German privacy rules, is suspected of acting on behalf of Ukrainian government entities, along with other military personnel, to destroy the pipelines in 2022.
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