Russia has carried out what looks like its largest aerial assault in two days since the war kicked off more than four years ago. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow sent out an astonishing 1,567 drones starting Wednesday.
This huge bombardment sort of clashes, quite openly, with what Russian President Vladimir Putin had recently suggested— that the fighting is “coming to an end”. Zelenskyy pushed back on that idea pretty hard and said these kinds of brutal strikes are not what a country doing “peace” would look like. He also asked international partners to publicly condemn the attacks and keep backing Ukraine’s air defenses.
Devastation in Kyiv and Across the Nation
Kyiv, the capital city, took the full blast overnight, with more than 670 attack drones and 56 missiles mixed in, so to speak. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said, in effect, that at least 21 people, among them three children, were killed just in the capital. Taken together, the two-day death count across the country is now 27 civilians.
Rescue workers are working around the clock, carving and cutting through concrete, sort of pushing in and searching for survivors, as they do. Early assessment suggests a recently produced Russian Kh-101 missile hit a nine-story apartment block in Kyiv, and an entire slice of the building folded in. In response, Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced, on Friday, a day of mourning.
But the damage did not stay put. Across Ukraine, 180 facilities and more than 50 residential buildings were reported as damaged. In Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second-largest city, 28 people were injured. Also, Zelenskyy noted that during a mission in the southern city of Kherson, a vehicle connected to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was shot at by drones, more or less.
Infrastructure Attacks and Calls for Global Pressure
Critical infrastructure kind of became the main target in this latest wave of attacks. The Ministry of Energy of Ukraine said that there were widespread disruptions in power supply affecting 11 different regions, and not just that. Railway networks, as well as key port infrastructure in the southern Odesa area, were hit hard too.
What made it feel more synchronised is that these strikes happened while U.S. President Donald Trump was on a diplomatic visit in China, and that led Ukrainian officials to respond right away, especially when it comes to broader global peace efforts.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, speaking for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the attacks clearly show Moscow wants to keep fighting even with Washington pushing a peace narrative. In a post on X, Sybiha added that he is confident the leaders in the United States and China have enough leverage to get Putin to end the war in a decisive way.
