KYIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles tore into the Ukrainian capital before dawn on Saturday, killing nine people and injuring more than 30 others as part of an intensive, ongoing Russian air campaign.
"This was a horrific night for Kyiv," Vitali Klitschko, the city's mayor, said in a social media post.
The Russian attack included 35 missiles and 185 attack drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Only one of 27 ballistic missiles were shot down due to the country's dwindling supply of Patriot air defense missiles, the one weapon the country has to guard against such Russian attacks, Zelenskyy also said.
The bombardment hit five areas of Kyiv, setting off fires that sent rescue crews scrambling throughout the night to pull residents from damaged and burning apartment blocks.
Firefighters doused gutted buildings with hoses. Their beams cut through smoke and darkness, while charred cars were parked in the street and in apartment courtyards. One image taken by the Associated Press showed a covered body near a cluster of burned-out vehicles. In another, blood pooled across a crosswalk littered with broken glass and debris from the blasts.
Casualties in multiple Kyiv neighborhoods
Explosions woke residents around 1:30 a.m local time, with doors in residential building hallways blown off their hinges, windows shattered and roofing collapsed.
The heaviest toll came in the Darnytskyi district, where seven people died and 14 were hurt, according to Ukraine's state emergency service. In the Solomianskyi district, falling debris and a blaze damaged a five-story apartment building. Crews pulled 35 residents from its upper floors. Two people did not survive, and children were among the injured. Firefighters also halted a blaze in a non-residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district, and officials reported damage to commercial and residential property in two additional districts.
Lithuania's foreign minister said his country's embassy in Kyiv sustained damage when missiles hit nearby.
Russia's Defense Ministry characterized the attack as a large-scale strike on military-industrial and logistics sites in Kyiv, according to reports in Russian media.
A stalled push for more interceptors
Saturday morning's attack followed a separate Russian strike two days earlier that killed at least 10 people elsewhere in Ukraine, part of what Ukrainian government officials have described as an expanded effort by Moscow to capitalize on Kyiv's lack of interceptors that are capable of bringing down ballistic missiles.
That shortage has been at the center of Zelenskyy's recent appeals to President Trump.
Writing on social media after the latest strikes, Zelenskyy said "every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people," insisting that each night without them leads to further deaths. In an earlier, separate post, Zelenskyy said he had spoken by phone Friday with Vice President JD Vance and reiterated some of the topics discussed during his meeting on Tuesday with Trump at the White House.
The Ukrainian leader emerged from that meeting saying that he expected to move ahead with a plan that would give Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot air defense missiles.
He also held talks with executives at Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor that makes the Patriot missiles.
At a NATO summit in Ankara last month, Trump signaled the U.S. would allow Ukraine to manufacture its own Patriot systems. Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, though, he said "we have not agreed to that," saying only that officials were discussing the possibility but that it's "a hard thing to give away that kind of technology."
Strikes beyond the capital
The Russian attacks extended outside Ukraine's capital.
One airstrike killed a person and wounded 19 in the southern city of Kherson, officials from Ukraine's emergency services posted on social media. Ukraine, meanwhile, kept up its own long-range campaign against Russian energy infrastructure.
Zelenskyy on Saturday said Ukrainian drones struck three oil refineries overnight in Russia's Bashkortostan region, roughly 1,000 miles from the front lines — the latest salvo in a long-range drone campaign that has strained Russian fuel supplies.
A sanctioned Russian container ship was also sunk in the Black Sea following a Ukrainian drone strike, Zelenskyy said. Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear firm, which owns the vessel's operating subsidiary, said it had only been carrying frozen food and construction materials, according to Reuters.
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