The missiles came in the early hours, when most of Kyiv was still asleep.
Russia launched one of its largest coordinated strikes on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks overnight, killing at least nine people and leaving rescue workers scrambling through rubble in the darkness. The attacks hit multiple cities simultaneously, a tactic designed to stretch Ukraine’s air defences thin.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that two high-rise apartment buildings had taken direct hits.
“Rescuers are working at the scene. There are fears people are still trapped under the debris,”
he said, urging residents to stay in shelters. The images emerging from the capital showed blown-out windows, collapsed floors, and families standing in the street with nowhere to go.
It wasn’t just Kyiv. Reports from at least three other Ukrainian cities described strikes on residential areas, with emergency services overwhelmed in the hours that followed. The death toll of nine is expected to rise as search teams work through the night.
Attacks of this scale tend to follow a grim pattern: they intensify when diplomatic pressure eases, or when Russia wants to send a message. This one came with no obvious warning and little time for residents to reach shelters.
For the people living in those apartment blocks, the kind of ordinary Tuesday night lives that exist even in wartime, the speed of it all is almost incomprehensible. One moment you’re home; the next, the building around you is gone.
Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted a significant number of the incoming missiles and drones, though the exact figures are still being verified. What got through was enough to cause devastation across several districts.
Western governments have condemned the strikes in the usual terms, but the gap between condemnation and consequence remains as wide as ever. As Ukraine heads deeper into its third year of full-scale war, the question isn’t whether these attacks will continue. It’s whether anything will actually change the calculation in Moscow that makes them worthwhile.
