At least 13 people were killed and over 80 people were injured after Russian drones and missiles hit residential buildings in Kyiv as part of a broader wave of Russian attacks overnight on the Ukrainian capital.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of the capital, confirmed on Telegram that 13 people were killed and 86 injured in Kyiv as the city came under a ballistic missile attack. Of the injured, 70 had to be hospitalized.
“A search and rescue operation is underway in a damaged house in the Darnytskyi district,” Klitschko wrote.
He earlier said a hotel roof caught fire on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while a direct hit from a Russian projectile caused six floors of an apartment building to partially collapse.
Emergency crews were seen searching through the rubble of the collapsed nine-story building in a Reuters video.
Several explosions were heard across parts of the city overnight into Thursday.
According to Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, three dozen locations across the city were damaged in the attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier that intelligence reports indicated that a major assault was likely and that he was cutting short his stay in Dublin.
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Ukrainian drones disrupting Russian military lines
Russia’s drone and missile attacks come after Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow earlier this week.
And that Ukrainian drone assault came less than two weeks after the country hit a major oil refinery in the Moscow region in the biggest drone attack on the Russian capital since the start of the full-scale war in 2022.
Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy facilities and other critical infrastructure over the course of the war.
But Ukraine is now producing better long-range drones and has struck targets deep inside Russia.
A new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Wednesday said that, by some estimates, over 90% of Russian casualties were from drone attacks rather than a result of human-to-human engagements.
Russia’s heavy price in Ukraine war
The CSIS study said Russian forces suffered approximately 1.4 million battlefield casualties (killed, wounded or missing) between February 2022 and June 2026 and between 400,000 and 450,000 fatalities during this same period.
Ukrainian forces have suffered somewhere between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) and between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities between February 2022 and June 2026.
That means more than two million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and wounded since the start of the war, a bleak milestone.
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Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru and Karl Sexton
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