Russia pounds Kyiv with missiles and drones in heavy overnight assault

Kyiv was rocked by explosions shortly after midnight on Sunday, as Russia pounded Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and suicide drones hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the US Embassy warned of an imminent large-scale attack.

An FT correspondent counted more than a dozen building-shaking blasts that reverberated across the capital and which Ukraine’s air force and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said were the result of ballistic missile strikes.

Air defences were seen trying to intercept some of the incoming missiles. Klitschko said that first responders were being sent to the capital’s historic Podil neighbourhood to deal with a medical emergency. Damage to buildings was reported in three other districts.

Zelenskyy said just hours earlier that his intelligence services had received data, “including from American and European partners, about Russia preparing a strike with the Oreshnik missile.” The Oreshnik is a Russian-made intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) capable of carrying multiple conventional or nuclear warheads.

Moscow has launched two Oreshnik missiles during the war. The first struck the south-eastern city of Dnipro on November 21, 2024; the second hit infrastructure in the western Lviv region, near the Polish border, on January 9 this year.

The Ukrainian air force reported an active “threat” from a likely inbound Oreshnik missile. It was not immediately clear whether one had been used in Russia’s latest attack early Sunday.

Zelenskyy said on Saturday evening that Ukraine was “seeing signs of preparation for a combined strike on Ukrainian territory, including Kyiv, involving various types of weaponry.”

“The specified intermediate-range weapons could be used in such a strike,” he added, urging Ukrainians to “act responsibly” and mind the air raid alerts. Residents were seen running to bomb shelters and underground metro stations as the attack got under way.

The US Embassy in Kyiv had earlier sent a security alert to American citizens in Ukraine saying that it had “received information concerning a potentially significant air attack that may occur at any time over the next 24 hours.”

“The embassy, as always, recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced,” it continued. 

Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha responded to that alert saying Kyiv was “grateful for your warning of a massive strike. And we understand your warnings to your citizens.”

“But the key warning must be heard not in Kyiv and not by foreigners,” he said. “It must be a warning heard in Moscow by the Russian regime. 

He told Washington: “You have the leverage. Use it now. Warn Moscow of the cost it will have to pay. Both publicly and through closed channels.”

Zelenskyy said ahead of the attack that Ukrainian officials were “drawing the attention of our partners in the United States and in Europe to the fact that the use of such weapons and the prolongation of this war also sets a global precedent for other potential aggressors.”

“Pressure must be put on Moscow so that it does not expand the war,” he added.

The president said he was “preparing our air defence as much as possible, and we will respond fully justly to every Russian strike.”

The onslaught came 10 days after Russia pummelled cities across Ukraine with dozens of missiles and more than 1,400 drones in a relentless 24-hour barrage. A direct strike on a Kyiv apartment building by a Kh-101 missile produced this year with western components killed 24 people.

Ukraine has retaliated against Russia’s energy infrastructure, sending long-range drones deep into the country and striking oil and gas facilities in an attempt to stifle the resources underpinning its war machine.

Kyiv has also targeted military logistics and command and control centres inside Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. It said on Saturday that it had attacked a base belonging to Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit housed in a dormitory in the town of Starobilsk, in the eastern Luhansk region.

But Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday claimed there were “no military facilities, intelligence service facilities or related services in the vicinity”, according to state media. Russian authorities said the building housed students and that 18 people were killed and 42 others injured in the strike.

Putin vowed retaliation for the Ukrainian attack and ordered his military to draw up proposals. Hours later, the bombardment on Kyiv began.