Russian missiles and drones pounded Kyiv overnight in an attack that killed six people and sparked fires in buildings across the city, the local authorities said. It was the latest in a series of Russian aerial assaults that have often targeted the country’s power grid in an effort to plunge Ukrainians into cold and darkness as winter looms.
The attack also targeted Kharkiv in the northeast, limiting electricity and disrupting water supplies. But the main focus appeared to be Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where air-raid sirens first wailed shortly before midnight to signal the start of the attack and sounded again at 5 a.m. to mark its end.
Between those alerts, residents heard a grimly familiar soundtrack — the buzz of attack drones over neighborhoods, the staccato of heavy machine guns trying to shoot them down and the thud of air-defense missiles trying to intercept Russian ones.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 19 missiles and 430 drones, most of which were shot down. These figures could not be independently verified.
“This was a deliberately calculated attack aimed at causing maximum harm to people and civilian infrastructure,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media. “In Kyiv alone, dozens of apartment buildings have been damaged.” He added that missile debris had hit the Azerbaijani Embassy.
Mr. Zelensky said, “Ukraine is responding to these strikes with long-range strength,” a reference to Kyiv’s campaign of long-range strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure, aimed at cutting off the energy revenues that fuel the Kremlin’s war effort.
The Russian authorities in the southwestern region of Krasnodar reported an attack on the Russian Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, where drones damaged an oil depot, a cargo container terminal and coastal facilities.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have widened their long-range strike campaign to include Russia’s own power grid, hitting several substations and thermal plants and causing temporary blackouts. Targeting of the power grid appears aimed at bringing the war directly to Russian civilians while also signaling that Ukraine can respond in kind to Russia’s attacks.
Still, Russia retains the upper hand in the aerial war. Last month alone, it launched more than 5,500 attack drones and decoys at Ukraine, forcing the country to defend its skies nearly every night. It also fired nearly 270 missiles, more than in any month since early 2024, according to a New York Times analysis of data published by the Ukrainian Air Force.
Mr. Zelensky has long urged Ukraine’s Western allies to supply more air defenses. He said he wanted to order Patriot air-defense systems from the United States, each of which costs at least $1 billion to build. Kyiv, already cash-strapped by nearly four years of war, has no choice but to press its European partners to foot the bill. Mr. Zelensky is scheduled to visit Greece and France on Sunday and Monday.
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.
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