In the early hours of Monday, Russia executed a sustained multi-wave assault on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack drones, leaving at least three civilians dead just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly warned that a large-scale attack was imminent, Ukrainian officials confirmed.
The assault inflicted severe damage on civilian residential infrastructure across the capital. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, announced via Telegram that a residential apartment block in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district suffered partial collapse from the strikes. In the eastern Darnytsia district, multiple multi-story residential buildings were also hit and damaged, with emergency responders warning that an unknown number of residents remain trapped under crumbled debris.
“These are not military targets — these are ordinary apartment buildings, places where ordinary Kyiv residents slept and went about their daily lives,” Tkachenko said of the targeted civilian areas.
As the assault continued through the early hours of Monday, loud explosions reverberated across multiple districts of the capital city, forcing thousands of local civilians to rush to underground metro stations to seek emergency shelter from the incoming strikes.
Monday’s coordinated attack marks the second major Russian strike on Kyiv in less than a week. Just days prior, a separate combined Russian assault on the capital killed at least 31 people, making it one of the deadliest single attacks on Kyiv in recent months.
In a Telegram statement issued late Sunday, before the strikes began, Zelenskyy repeated his urgent appeal to Western allies to speed up and expand deliveries of advanced air defense systems to Ukraine, specifically calling for more Patriot missile interceptors. The Ukrainian president emphasized that delays in replenishing Ukraine’s critical air defense stocks do not just leave Ukrainian cities vulnerable — they directly embolden the Kremlin to continue its full-scale invasion, which is now in its fourth year.