Russia again exploits Ukrainian air defense shortages as deadly strikes pound Kyiv

By Kosta Gak, Lex Harvey, Lauren Kent, CNN

Kyiv (CNN) — At least 16 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a “massive” Russian attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight into Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said.

The strikes damaged a hospital, a school, residential buildings and several warehouses across the city, local authorities said, as the destruction of civilian infrastructure also drew sharp international condemnation.

CNN producers in the Ukrainian capital heard several explosions and saw smoke over the city, as an air raid alert stretched on for hours. Massive fires lit up the night sky over the capital, video by Reuters news agency showed.

Ukraine has been relatively successful at intercepting the massive numbers of drones that Russia uses in its large-scale attacks. But in recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly exploited Kyiv’s near-zero stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles, which are needed to defend against faster-moving ballistic missiles.

Ukraine only has 10% of the interceptor missiles it urgently needs from the United States and other allies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN in an interview earlier this month.

“This year we have two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025,” Zelensky said in that interview. “Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before.”

Russia’s defense ministry said Thursday on Telegram that it had launched a “massive strike using high-precision weapons” against military facilities, a transport and logistics center, and warehouses in the city of Kyiv and the broader region.

Zelensky said on Thursday that “the Russians prepared for a long time and combined various types of projectiles, cruise missiles, and drones to inflict as much damage as possible on civilian infrastructure.”

Rescue workers had pulled two people from the rubble and were continuing to deal with the aftermath of the attack, which damaged more than a dozen locations across the city, emergency services said. Firefighters were working to extinguish massive blazes.

“The missiles narrowly missed us by about 10 minutes,” local Kyiv resident Anastasiia Kovtun, 31, told Reuters. She and her neighbors fled to a bomb shelter in a nearby parking garage. “By the time we were on our way back, the entire road had already been bombed, and all the buildings along the route were damaged.”

Windows were shattered at a children’s hospital in the Solomianskyi district, said Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko.

Outside of Kyiv, Russia also attacked gas infrastructure in the Chernihiv region and a border crossing with Moldova in the Odesa region, Zelensky said.

Other drone attacks and shelling hit the regions of Zhytomyr, Kherson, Kharkiv and Donetsk. In total, in the last 24 hours, the death toll in Ukraine has reached 25 people, with a further 132 injured throughout the country, according to reports from regional military administrations.

Drones hit Romanian, Moldovan territory

During the attacks on Ukraine, Romania’s defense ministry said a Russian drone had crashed into its territory, landing in an uninhabited area in the county of Tulcea, near the Ukrainian border, Reuters reported. Russian drones have repeatedly breached Romanian airspace throughout the war.

The defense ministry later added that it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to destroy a marine drone that was carrying explosives near a Romanian offshore natural gas project.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the naval drone an example of “hybrid warfare” and said that “an escalating campaign of threats is underway, unsettling our citizens and seeking to divide our Union.”

Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, also said on Thursday that her country’s airspace was once again violated as “a drone came down on Moldovan territory. Russia must face far greater pressure to stop this.”

Meanwhile, Poland said it had started preventative military aviation operations to protect its airspace during the strikes, Reuters reported.

While Moscow has been striking Ukraine near-nightly, Kyiv has also ramped up its offensive, launching more than 800 drones at Russia Sunday in one of its largest aerial attacks of the conflict.

Russia’s state-run TASS News said it was the largest Ukrainian drone attack since the beginning of the year – with many of the drones targeting the Moscow area where many of Russia’s elite reside.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defense ministry said it intercepted and destroyed 791 Ukrainian drones overnight, in another major assault launched by Kyiv.

CNN’s Amy Croffey contributed to this report.

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