Russia's 'most massive' Kyiv attack kills 18 overnight
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- Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones at Kyiv overnight in what Mayor Vitaly Klitschko called the "most massive attack" on the capital, killing 18 and injuring around 90; Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning.
- The 11-hour assault struck locations across a very wide area in waves — a drone strike on Kyiv's historic quarter, dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles at 01:00, more cruise missiles at 03:00, and drones until dawn — with air defences repelling most weapons but 25 ballistic missiles and 12 drones hitting 33 locations.
- An ambulance station was among the buildings struck; children were among the "significant number" of casualties per Kyiv military administration head Tymur Tkachenko.
- In the Darnitskyi district, two missiles hit a residential area directly — one leaving a crater next to a kindergarten and another collapsing a 9-storey block of flats, where rescuers dug through rubble searching for a missing 15-year-old girl and her family.
- President Zelensky urged the US to grant licences to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles, calling supplies "an absolute and critical priority"; Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha demanded partners send more air defence systems, saying Ukraine needed "concrete action to stop Russian terror."
- Moscow claimed the strikes hit Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure in retaliation for Kyiv's long-range attacks on Russian power stations from Moscow to the Black Sea — attacks that forced Vladimir Putin's rare admission of domestic fuel shortages.
Why it matters: Russia deployed 74 missiles and 496 drones — the largest weapon count on Kyiv — in an 11-hour barrage that residents described as a changed pattern: fewer attacks but far longer and heavier waves. Kyiv's recent long-range strikes on Russian power stations, which forced Putin's rare fuel-shortage admission, are now the explicit trigger Moscow cites for retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
