A wave of large-scale Russian overnight missile attacks across multiple major Ukrainian cities has left at least four civilians dead and more than a dozen others injured, just days after a separate strike hit an apartment complex in the eastern city of Dnipro, local administrative officials confirmed early Tuesday.
The fatalities were all recorded in Dnipro, where the attack claimed the life of a 73-year-old woman among the four dead, and left five additional people wounded. In the northeastern hub of Kharkiv, eight people sustained injuries from the strikes, while the capital city of Kyiv reported four people hurt in the assault.
In Kyiv, where ballistic missiles targeted locations across the city, thousands of residents rushed to underground shelters as thick plumes of dark smoke billowed from areas in the city center. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko issued an urgent alert via social media early Tuesday, writing, “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working! Stay in shelters!”
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, confirmed that the attacking forces were using ballistic missiles for the assault. Klitschko later added that two separate high-rise apartment buildings had sustained direct hits in the strikes, and rescue teams are currently working to clear rubble amid fears that multiple people remain trapped beneath destroyed structures.
The coordinated overnight attacks come less than 24 hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly reiterated intelligence warnings of an impending massive Russian strike, urging all Ukrainian residents to take air raid alerts seriously and prepare for potential assaults. In his nightly Monday video address, Zelenskyy stressed that threat assessments remained active, noting, “Intelligence warnings regarding Russian strikes remain in effect. A massive strike is possible, they have prepared one.”