At least 22 killed in Kyiv as Zelenskyy warns of ‘massive Russian strike’ | Russia-Ukraine war News

At least 22 people have been killed, and several dozens were injured in a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv, which came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of an impending “massive” attack by Moscow.

The Kyiv city military administration said the death toll had risen to 22 by early Thursday evening, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces would “definitely” retaliate for the overnight pummelling of the capital.

Damage from the strikes included an “ordinary nine-storey residential building”, Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that a missile had destroyed 64 apartments.

Footage shared by the president showed a gaping hole across six floors of the partially collapsed building, surrounded by rubble.

“Russia has once again deliberately attacked ordinary civilians and residential buildings,” the president said, adding that more than 130 such sites have been damaged in total across Kyiv.

City administration head Tymur Tkachenko said at least two children were among the injured and three dozen locations across the city had been damaged in the attacks.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia attacked the country with 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight. It said on Telegram ‌that air defence units downed or neutralised 48 missiles and 476 ⁠drones, but 25 ⁠ballistic missiles and 12 drones hit ⁠33 locations.

“We express our condolences to all the victims, families who lost their relatives and loved ones in this terrible terrorist attack. We will take revenge!” it added in a statement.

According to Al Jazeera’s Audrey MacAlpine, drones began entering the skies over Kyiv just past midnight local time (22:00 GMT).

“You could hear those interceptions overhead, and then very, very large explosions … around 2am [00:00 GMT],” she said, reporting from the Ukrainian capital.

Pictures ⁠shared on unofficial Telegram channels showed city residents crowding into underground stations to take cover from the Russian strikes. In the streets, residents were seen making their way to the shelters, carrying sleeping mats under their arms, the AFP news agency reported.

Residents had suspected an attack would take place, so thousands preemptively sheltered in the city’s subway systems, MacAlpine said. Dozens of missiles hit at least 30 locations in the city.

Zelenskyy said the sites included an ambulance station, a scientific institute, a hotel and businesses. Approximately 800,000 books were destroyed in the inventory warehouse of Ukrainian publishing house BookChef, the Kyiv Independent reported, while Ukraine’s private energy company DTEK said its energy infrastructure sustained damage.

Klitschko announced a day of mourning in Kyiv for Friday.

Russia has routinely launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, including the capital, during its more than four-year invasion. The war is Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Telegram on Thursday that it carried out a “massive attack” on Kyiv and other locations using long-range, high-precision air, land- and sea-launched weapons and drones.

The ministry said it hit military and energy facilities around Kyiv, as well as military airports in several regions including Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk, in what it called retaliation for Ukraine’s attack on civilian infrastructure.

Later on Thursday, the Kremlin said that President ⁠Vladimir ⁠Putin had been briefed by his top military ⁠commander about the massive overnight strike, adding that Moscow ‌would continue to increase pressure on Ukraine to achieve its goals.

In a call with reporters, ⁠Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused ⁠Europe of escalating ⁠tensions, and said Russia was unable to turn a ‌blind eye to such moves.

Russia ‘refusing to end war’

The deadly strikes on Kyiv came just hours after Zelenskyy said he was cutting short a visit to Ireland, warning of an imminent “massive Russian strike” and urging Ukrainians to take shelter.

“Today, we have information about another massive Russian strike; we have relevant intelligence data,” Zelenskyy said during a joint news conference in Dublin with Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin on Wednesday.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said: “Immediately after this conversation, I am returning to Ukraine.”

He called on citizens to be “especially careful” and “stay safe and protect your families and children” by heeding air raid alerts.

“We know that Putin has been preparing a massive strike against Ukraine for some time. That is exactly the threat we are facing tonight,” he added.

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of “completely refusing to end the war” it launched in February 2022, despite Ukrainian efforts through “all possible official and unofficial channels” to convey readiness for “meetings and meaningful negotiations”.

Putin “sees only further aggression against Ukraine and against other neighbours and Europe as a whole”, Zelenskyy said.

The attack came in advance of Zelenskyy’s upcoming attendance at a NATO conference to request more air defences, said MacAlpine.

He will specifically be looking at “Pac-2 and Pac-3, the American-made interceptor missile, really the only weapon that many would say could very effectively intercept things like ballistic missiles, things like these anti-ships, the aircon missiles, which travel … faster than the speed of sound,” she said.

While Ukraine has become quite adept at intercepting things like drones, “their Achilles heel remains in intercepting these ballistic threats”, which caused the greatest amount of damage in the overnight attacks, said MacAlpine.

Amid the attacks on Ukraine, neighbouring Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets on ⁠Thursday as a preventive measure before calling them back, saying no airspace violation was recorded.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said only sustained military support for Ukraine and increased pressure on Moscow could help stop Russian attacks.

“Today, I will propose to sanction more entities supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex in response to the strikes,” she said in a post on X.

“The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed.”

In Russia, one person was killed, four people were wounded, and an industrial facility was damaged in a drone attack on the Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Thursday. The region is home to the NORSI oil refinery, one of Russia’s largest.

In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, a man was killed and his wife injured after a drone hit their home, local authorities said separately on Telegram.