Kyiv Hit by Large Wave of Russian Strikes

Kyiv hit by Large Wave of Russian strikes

People are feared trapped under the rubble of a multi-story residential building after Russia launched a heavy drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital early Tuesday morning that wounded dozens, according to Ukrainian US officials.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said an apartment block in Kyiv’s Podilsky district had partially collapsed after a “double tap” Russian strike.

“Preliminary reports indicate that there are people trapped under the rubble,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv city military administration, wrote on Telegram.Russian missile and drone strikes damaged multiple residential and commercial buildings across the city, sparking fires and burning cars, authorities said.

Among them, a suspected missile strike hit a 24-story residential building in Shevchenkivskyi district, causing a fire, and a blaze broke out in a nine-story building in Podil after debris struck the roof, the mayor said. Elsewhere in the city, Russian strikes damaged a clinic and debris fell on the grounds of a kindergarten, Klitschko added.At least one person was killed and 29 wounded across Kyiv, including two children, Tkachenko said, in strikes that caused power outages in three districts and sent emergency services scrambling to respond.Russian attacks on other regions across Ukraine killed at least four people and wounded 24 others, including in Dnipro and Kharkiv, authorities said.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday reiterated his warning to citizens of a possible “massive” Russian strike.

“Intelligence warnings regarding Russian strikes remain in force. A massive strike is possible – they have prepared it,” Zelensky said in his nightly address.

The warning came after Russia said last week that it was beginning “systematic strikes” against military facilities in Kyiv, according to Russian state media.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry had also warned foreign nationals, including staff of diplomatic missions and international organizations, to leave Kyiv “as soon as possible.”The Russian strikes also came as Ukraine has expanded attacks on Russian oil assets.Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday that between between January and May, Ukrainian troops have struck 15 Russian oil refineries, knocking out 40% of Russia’s main oil refining capacity. CNN cannot independently verify the report.

“Intelligence warnings regarding Russian strikes remain in force. A massive strike is possible – they have prepared it,” Zelensky said in his nightly address.

The warning came after Russia said last week that it was beginning “systematic strikes” against military facilities in Kyiv, according to Russian state media.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry had also warned foreign nationals, including staff of diplomatic missions and international organizations, to leave Kyiv “as soon as possible.”

Russia used a new hypersonic ballistic missile in one of its biggest bombardments of the Kyiv region since the war began, an attack that left at least four people dead.

The United States classifies the Oreshnik, which can carry multiple conventional or nuclear warheads, as an intermediate-range missile. Its speed and trajectory make it almost unstoppable by the air defense systems available to Ukraine. It is only the third time Russia has used the missile.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the missile had come down near the city of Bila Tserkva in central Ukraine, adding: “They’re really out of their minds. It’s vital that this doesn’t go unpunished for Russia.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, said the missile fired carried a dummy warhead.

In a call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Russian military was beginning “systematic strikes” against military facilities in Kyiv, according to Russian state media.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday warned foreign nationals, including staff of diplomatic missions and international organizations, to leave Kyiv “as soon as possible.” The ministry also warned Kyiv residents not to approach military and administrative facilities of the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it is ready to provide security assistance for foreign diplomatic missions and called the Russian threats “shameless blackmail.”

The European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine said her team would stay in place. A State Department spokesperson said there are “no changes” to its embassy operations.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it is ready to provide security assistance for foreign diplomatic missions and called the Russian threats “shameless blackmail.”

The European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine said her team would stay in place. A State Department spokesperson said there are “no changes” to its embassy operations.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Russia using the Oreshnik was a “reckless escalation,” and reiterated Germany’s pledge to “stand firmly at Ukraine’s side.”

Altogether, Russia fired 600 drones and 90 missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which said that air defenses shot down 604 of the weapons. Sybiha described it as “one of the largest” attacks on the capital.

Ukraine’s emergency services said at least 87 people were wounded in the attacks on Kyiv, including three children.

“Unfortunately, not all the ballistic missiles were shot down. Kyiv suffered the most hits, and it was Kyiv that was the main target of this Russian attack,” Zelensky said.

Putin accused Ukraine of a “terrorist” act, claiming that Ukrainian drones struck a college dormitory in Starobilsk, a Russian-occupied town in eastern Luhansk on Friday.

Russian state news agency TASS said Saturday that the death toll of “children killed in the Ukrainian drone strike” had risen to 18, citing Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. A further three people are believed to be trapped under the rubble.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that the use of the Oreshnik and other ballistic missiles was “in response to Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian targets within Russian territory.”

Ukraine’s military has rejected Putin’s claim and reiterated that it strikes “military infrastructure and facilities used for military purposes.”

It added that among targets struck early Friday was “one of the headquarters of the ‘Rubicon’ unit in the Starobilsk area.”

The elite Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies has pioneered Russian drone technology and targeting since it was formed in 2024.

Taking shelter from Russia’s retaliation in a Kyiv metro station early Sunday, Nataliia Zvarych recounted a night of “horror.”

“We walked under the explosions, we saw things flying up there. It was terrifying, scary, we have been sitting here for more than three hours now, listening to the explosions up there,” the 62-year-old financier told the news agency Reuters, decrying Russia’s attack as “horrible.”

In a withering reference to Putin, Zelensky said Sunday that “decisions are needed from the United States of America, from Europe, and from others, so that this old curmudgeon in Moscow utters the word ‘peace.’”

Ukraine claims to have killed scores of Russians in two strikes in the country’s occupied regions, as Kyiv steps up mid-range drone attacks targeting Moscow’s military infrastructure.

One wave of strikes hit a Russian drone pilot training camp in the occupied town of Snizhne, killing at least 65 cadets and an instructor on Wednesday night, according to the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.

Another set of strikes hit a Russian security service headquarters and an air defense system in the Kherson region in occupied Ukraine, killing and wounding almost 100 Russians, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Thursday. He did not say when the attack took place.

On Friday, Russian acknowledged a third mass casualty attack, which President Vladimir Putin referred to as a “terrorist” act, saying that six people were killed and 39 injured when three waves of Ukrainian drones struck a college dormitory overnight in Starobilsk, an occupied town in Luhansk. Fifteen others are still missing, he added.

While Russian authorities haven’t commented on the other two attacks Ukraine claimed, throughout Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry touted gains it claims to have made on the front line.

The ministry also said Thursday it has delivered some nuclear munitions to storage sites in Belarus as part of a nuclear forces exercise. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, led those exercises Thursday via video call, the Kremlin added.

Ukraine has had some newfound success on the battlefield in recent weeks, stanching the rate at which it was losing land. Last month, it took back more land than Russia seized for the first time since August 2024, though Moscow still controls almost 20% of Ukraine’s territory, according to an analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based conflict monitor.

That success can largely be attributed to Kyiv’s current drone superiority. After focusing much of its efforts on short-range attacks on Russian positions along the front line, and long-range strikes reaching far into Russia itself, Ukraine has recently stepped up its mid-range strikes, targeting Russia’s logistics.

These attacks seem to mark the latest display of that strategy. Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, claimed the drone academy strike targeted a 2,484-square-meter complex, which housed drones and explosives as well as a command post. He posted footage appearing to show one-way attack drones hitting a building, which became increasingly damaged with each strike.

Zelensky also posted footage showing strikes destroying several buildings, alongside his claims of striking a Russian FSB headquarters and air defense system.

In other overnight strikes, Ukraine targeted the Syzran oil refinery, which lies in Russia’s Samara region, more than 800 kilometers (497 miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border, Zelensky said. Two family members of a Russian soldier who fought in Ukraine were killed in that strike, according to the region’s governor. Other salvos targeted areas all along Russia’s western border, forcing Russian air defenses to shoot down 121 Ukrainian drones, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Meanwhile, at least five people were killed and 41 injured in Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight into Thursday, as of midday, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of time to win his war against Ukraine, amid a stalemate on the battlefield and growing troubles at home, a European intelligence chief has told CNN.

In the next four or five months, Putin “may not be able to negotiate from a position of strength anymore,” Kaupo Rosin, head of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said in an interview at the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Tallinn.

Rosin detailed a combination of economic, military and societal pressures facing Putin that could force him to the negotiating table. “Time is not in Russia’s favor,” he said.

A former Soviet republic, Estonia is now a listening post for NATO, and Rosin spends much of his working life analyzing events inside the country’s overbearing and hostile neighbor.

“I do not hear any more talk about total victory. People (in the Kremlin) recognize that the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield is not going too well,” Rosin said, adding that Moscow was losing more men than it can recruit.

In the two years to January, Russian forces advanced at an average of 70 meters (230 feet) a day, with about 1,000 soldiers being killed or wounded daily, according to analysts from Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and others.

The Russians are “losing 15-20,000 soldiers a month dead. Not injured, dead,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week.

In April, 35,203 Russian soldiers were killed or severely wounded, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry, similar to each of the previous two months.

independently verify the losses from both sides. Moscow and Kyiv refrain from publishing official figures.

Posted on 2026/06/02 09:01 AM