Strong explosions rock Kyiv hours after Zelensky warned of ‘massive’ Russian attack

By Victoria Butenko and Lex Harvey, CNN

Kyiv (CNN) — A series of strong explosions rocked Kyiv overnight into Thursday, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that intelligence data showed Russia was planning a “massive” overnight strike.

Kyiv officials said Russia was launching ballistic missiles and drones at Ukraine, which damaged and set fire to residential buildings, killing at least one person.

At least eleven wounded people had been hospitalized following the attacks, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Rescuers were rushing to the scene of a destroyed nine-story building where people were trapped inside, Klitschko said.

Earlier, he said medical workers had been wounded after an ambulance substation was struck.

On Wednesday, Zelensky asked residents to be “especially careful” and to heed air-raid sirens, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been “preparing a massive strike against Ukraine for some time.”

“That is exactly the threat we are facing tonight,” Zelensky said in a post to X.

Some residents packed into metro stations for shelter, preparing for a long night of sirens, which began sounding around 8 p.m. local time.

Ukraine has launched an unprecedented drone campaign against Russia in the past month, targeting energy infrastructure in long-range drone attacks that Zelensky has framed as a key strategy to force Moscow to end the war.

On a single night last week, Russia reported intercepting 660 drones across 12 regions — one of the largest Ukrainian attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Earlier in June, a Russian attack in the heart of Kyiv set fire to a prominent Ukrainian monastery complex, the UNESCO-listed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

This is developing story and will be updated.

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