A new barrage of Russian missile, drone and guided bomb attacks across Ukraine on Saturday left at least six civilians dead and dozens injured, Ukrainian authorities have confirmed, marking the latest escalation in Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion that began in February 2022.
In the capital city Kyiv, regional officials reported that 12 people were wounded in the strikes, including two minor children. AFP correspondents on the ground in Kyiv confirmed hearing two distinct waves of explosions in the early hours of Saturday, with a nationwide air alert siren activated only minutes after the first blast rattled the city.
While Russian forces have launched near-daily airstrikes against Kyiv since the invasion began, a recent surge in deadly attacks deploying large volumes of ultra-fast ballistic missiles has stretched Ukraine’s overstretched air defense network to breaking point. In a public post on social media platform X Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Russia launched more than 120 drones and 12 missiles overnight, with half of those projectiles being hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles.
“Civilian infrastructure was hit even before the air raid alert was issued,” Zelenskyy said, alongside shared footage showing first responders and emergency crews searching for survivors through smoke and rubble of destroyed structures. He added that apartment blocks, commercial office buildings and a theological academy in Kyiv sustained heavy damage, with search and recovery operations ongoing across multiple affected regions.
Casualties were reported in two other major Ukrainian cities outside the capital. In the northern city of Sumy, a guided aerial bomb strike killed four people, including a young girl, Sumy Mayor Artem Kobzar confirmed. A separate missile attack on the southern port city of Odesa left two more civilians dead, regional governor Oleg Kiper announced.
Zelenskyy noted that Ukrainian air defenses successfully intercepted the majority of incoming Russian targets, but struggled against the faster ballistic missiles. He renewed his longstanding plea for Western military allies to speed up and expand security assistance to help Ukraine fend off the invasion, which has entered its third full year of conflict. Specifically, he called on the United States to quickly finalize a pledge to allow Ukraine to domestically produce Patriot air defense systems. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would approve Ukrainian domestic manufacturing of Patriot missiles, though Zelenskyy noted Thursday that key technical details of the agreement are still being negotiated.
Saturday’s pre-air-alert strike on Kyiv marks the second time in less than a week that Russian projectiles hit targets before sirens could be activated. Sergiy Sternenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister, wrote on Telegram that the early impacts suggest Russia is repurposing its S-400 anti-aircraft systems to conduct ground strikes, a tactic that makes incoming projectiles far harder for Ukrainian radar systems to detect in advance. “There is no military logic to such attacks. It is simply terrorism for the sake of terrorism,” Sternenko added.
Moscow has denied intentionally targeting civilian populations in Ukraine, claiming in a statement that its Saturday strikes only hit “military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and seaport infrastructure in Odesa.” The attack comes one day after Ukrainian drones struck multiple oil refineries in southern Russia, part of Kyiv’s recent campaign targeting Russian energy infrastructure to disrupt its war machine.