Fresh waves of Russian drone and missile attacks have targeted Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, leaving at least one civilian dead and 31 others wounded, including a child, local officials confirmed Thursday. The assault comes just days after a short-lived three-day ceasefire brokered amid international diplomacy, ending with Moscow resuming full-scale offensive operations across Ukrainian territory.
AFP correspondents on the ground in Kyiv reported air raid sirens blaring across the city hours before a sustained barrage of loud explosions echoed through residential neighborhoods overnight. Thousands of residents rushed to underground metro stations and other bomb shelters to escape the incoming fire, which stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a statement on social media outlining the scale of the assault: Russian forces launched more than 670 attack drones and 56 missiles in the operation, with most strikes concentrated on targets within Kyiv and its surrounding regions. “These are definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end,” Zelensky wrote, adding that he had received preliminary reports of multiple people still trapped beneath rubble at damaged sites. The Ukrainian leader emphasized that Kyiv expects its international partners to condemn the attack explicitly, rather than remaining silent on the escalation.
Preliminary damage assessments show more than 20 locations across Kyiv sustained damage, including multiple civilian structures: private residential apartment blocks, a public school, a veterinary clinic and other critical community infrastructure. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, initially reported one fatality and 16 injuries in the capital proper, before Ukraine’s State Emergency Service updated the overall casualty count for the broader Kyiv region to 31 wounded.
Military officials confirmed the strikes hit six districts within Kyiv city limits and an additional six districts in the surrounding suburbs. By dawn Thursday, AFP photographers captured rescue teams combing through collapsed building debris for survivors, with crews pulling one wounded resident out of a partially destroyed residential block. Search and rescue operations remain ongoing as of Thursday afternoon.
The resumption of large-scale hostilities followed Russia’s formal end to its three-day ceasefire on Tuesday. The temporary pause in fighting was announced last week by former U.S. President Donald Trump, just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a scaled-back annual Victory Day military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Zelensky has publicly called on Trump to push for a negotiated end to the ongoing conflict during his scheduled meetings this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The overnight attack on Kyiv marks the second major Russian barrage in as many days: on Wednesday, a wave of at least 800 Russian drones targeted regions in western Ukraine, killing six people and wounding dozens more.
Russia has carried out sustained bombardment campaigns across Ukrainian population centers for more than four years, with large-scale drone and missile attacks typically launched under cover of darkness. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered the most severe armed conflict on the European continent since World War II, with casualty estimates reaching hundreds of thousands of people killed and more than 14 million Ukrainians displaced from their homes, according to United Nations data.