In a major escalation of aerial attacks on Ukraine, Russian forces launched more than 100 drones alongside two ballistic missiles against Ukrainian targets overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force confirmed Tuesday. The attack came just one day after Moscow issued explicit warnings of impending large-scale strikes on the Ukrainian capital, prompting evacuation calls for foreign nationals and diplomatic staff — a threat Ukrainian officials dismissed as nothing new to their experience of nearly three years of constant Russian attacks.
On Monday, Russian authorities urged all foreign citizens, including diplomatic personnel stationed in Kyiv, to evacuate the capital immediately, advising local residents to avoid all military and government infrastructure amid preparations for what it called “systemic strikes” against the city. In a diplomatic readout, Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov raised the call for U.S. diplomatic evacuation during a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. While Rubio did not confirm whether the U.S. State Department would comply with the demand, he expressed concern during an official trip to India that the ongoing “terrible” conflict in Ukraine could spiral into further escalation.
The current Trump administration has spent more than a year pursuing diplomatic efforts to end the full-scale war that began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. To date, those negotiations have produced no major breakthrough, and talks have been paused entirely as Washington redirects its strategic focus to the ongoing conflict with Iran.
Despite Moscow’s stark warnings, no diplomatic missions have announced plans to withdraw from Kyiv. The European Union, French and Polish embassies have all issued public statements confirming they will remain in the capital. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry officials pushed back on Moscow’s threat assessment Monday, noting that the level of security risk to Kyiv and other Ukrainian urban centers remains unchanged from what the country has navigated for months and years. Russia has carried out continuous missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian population centers since the full-scale invasion began, they added, and Ukraine stands ready to provide additional security support to any diplomatic mission that requests it.
Moscow framed its massive weekend attack — the largest single missile strike of 2025 — as retaliation for a deadly Ukrainian drone strike on a building in Starobilsk, a Luhansk region city under Russian occupation. Russia claimed the strike hit a college dormitory, but Ukraine’s General Staff corrected the account, confirming the target was the local headquarters of a Russian special military drone unit.
A key vulnerability for Ukraine’s defense remains a critical shortage of air defense interceptors needed to stop Russian ballistic missile attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Monday. In a social media statement, Zelenskyy noted that advanced U.S.-manufactured air defense systems, which Ukraine relies on to counter Russian ballistic threats, are in short supply due to competing defense demands from the Iran war. “Unfortunately, there has been no progress for a long time with America on expanding the production of anti-ballistic capabilities,” Zelenskyy wrote. He added that Kyiv is now working closely with European partners to scale up domestic production of anti-ballistic defenses to meet battlefield needs.
Despite the air defense shortfall, Zelenskyy noted that Ukrainian forces have made incremental battlefield gains in recent months that have allowed them to stabilize the 1,250-kilometer front line stretching across eastern and southern Ukraine, demonstrating that Kyiv’s military is able to hold its position against Russia’s larger force.
Independent analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based security think tank, finds that Russia’s planned spring offensive is already struggling to make gains, as mid-range Ukrainian drone strikes repeatedly disrupt Russian rear-echelon supply lines. The think tank noted Monday that Moscow’s public warnings of massive upcoming strikes on Kyiv are largely a distraction tactic, designed to draw public attention away from poor Russian battlefield performance and growing domestic economic pressure caused by war spending and international sanctions.
This report featured contributions from correspondent Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, and Elise Morton in London, and is part of AP’s ongoing coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.