Russia bombards Kyiv in one of war’s biggest strikes, at least 21 people killed
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- Russia fired 74 missiles and 496 drones at Kyiv overnight, killing at least 21, wounding more than 90 including children, and damaging around 130 buildings across the entire city in what the Ukrainian air force called an unusually high ballistic-missile salvo with a low interception rate.
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who cut short a visit to Ireland, blamed the destruction on allies failing to deliver promised air defenses, saying Ukraine has struggled with shortages of Patriot missiles in recent months.
- Russia's Defence Ministry said the strike hit military and energy facilities and airports, calling it retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian fuel infrastructure; Kyiv hit an oil refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region overnight, killing one person, as part of a campaign that has forced Russia — the world's third-biggest oil producer — to import gasoline from India.
- EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she would propose sanctions on additional entities supporting Russia's military-industrial complex, declaring that 'the more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed.'
- Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a day of mourning for Friday, with more than 600 rescuers sifting through rubble and some residents still trapped inside damaged residential buildings.
- Zelenskiy said Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators held talks in the past two days and he hoped to meet President Donald Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey next week; Poland briefly scrambled fighter jets and Finland issued a temporary aviation restriction in the eastern Gulf of Finland as a precaution.
Why it matters: The strike hardens a documented escalation loop: Ukraine's drone campaign has degraded Russian refining enough to force gasoline imports from India, and Moscow's response is now hitting Kyiv residential blocks and a biochemistry institute. With Zelenskiy publicly blaming Western air-defense delays and a Trump meeting on the NATO summit calendar, the deadliest Kyiv attack in months lands directly into an active diplomatic pressure window.
