{"id":145544,"date":"2026-07-02T12:02:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/most-massive-russian-attack-on-kyiv-kills-at-least-18\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:02:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:02:50","slug":"most-massive-russian-attack-on-kyiv-kills-at-least-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/most-massive-russian-attack-on-kyiv-kills-at-least-18\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Most massive\u2019 Russian attack on Kyiv kills at least 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian forces launched a major drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight, killing 18 people, in what the city\u2019s mayor has described as the \u201cmost massive attack\u201d on the Ukrainian capital.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vitaly Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning and said around 90 people were injured. He said an ambulance station was among the places hit in the strikes.<\/p>\n

Although previous attacks have killed more people, this latest barrage deployed the largest number of weapons on the capital and hit locations over a very wide area of Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Several neighbourhoods were evacuated as strikes rocked buildings throughout the city, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Russia was preparing an attack.<\/p>\n

Moscow said its forces hit what they called military plants in retaliation against attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that Russia would \u201ccontinue to increase pressure on the Kyiv regime in order to achieve our set goals\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ukraine accused Moscow of targeting civilian areas and said it would be wrong to equate the actions of the \u201caggressor and a country defending itself\u201d.<\/p>\n

Children were among the \u201csignificant number\u201d of casualties, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv\u2019s \u200bmilitary administration, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe enemy is once again deliberately targeting residential areas and killing civilians,\u201d he said early on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Among the places hit by the strikes were a high-rise apartment building with part of the building blown off in south-east Kyiv.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on Telegram, Klitschko said rescuers were trying to find, among others, a 15-year-old girl and her family.<\/p>\n

On the city\u2019s left bank, in Darnitskyi district in south-east Kyiv, two missiles hit a residential area directly, causing devastation.<\/p>\n

One missile left a giant crater next to a kindergarten and the buildings all around have been gutted by fire, their metal balconies twisted.<\/p>\n

The second missile landed a few steps away and hit the end of a 9-storey block of flats. It has collapsed, sliding off the face of the building, into a heap of concrete. One local told the BBC that several people were missing and they may have been in the basement, sheltering.<\/p>\n

There are smashed cars and smashed windows and a thick layer of grey ash coating everything and everyone.<\/p>\n

Rescuers have been trying to dig through the rubble to reach them as relatives watch, in tears.<\/p>\n

Svitlana, who lives next to the building that was hit, told the BBC she was hiding in the corridor during the air raid and heard the explosions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t scary,\u201d she shrugged, \u201cBecause I\u2019ve been through it all before.\u201d She then revealed that she had been badly injured in another Russian strike on another town which killed her mother. Two years later, her son was killed in action fighting for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Oleksiy, his face covered in cuts and blood, told the BBC he had stepped outside to smoke after he heard the first missile, then the second one landed and he was hit by flying glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not retaliation by Russia for Ukrainian strikes,\u201d he said, dismissing Moscow\u2019s explanation for its latest attack. \u201cThey started this war. This is a residential area. And they targeted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attack on Kyiv lasted more than 11 hours and came in several waves starting with a drone strike on Kyiv\u2019s historic quarter, setting off a fire in a hotel in the city centre.<\/p>\n

At 01:00, dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles were fired. A brief lull preceded another dozen of cruise missiles at 03:00, followed by a swarm of drones which targeted the capital until dawn.<\/p>\n

Residents of Kyiv who have lived through four-and-a-half years of war say they have perceived a change in the pattern of Russia\u2019s assaults on the capital over the last two months. Attacks may now happen less frequently \u2013 albeit still every few days \u2013 but last longer, and seem more powerful and widespread.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian military experts described the latest barrage as one of the most challenging assaults for the country\u2019s air defences in recent months.<\/p>\n

Aviation expert Bohdan Dolintsev told Ukrainian media that Russia\u2019s technique of using multiple types of weapons within the same time window, and wearing down Ukraine\u2019s defences creates an exceptionally complex challenge for Ukraine\u2019s air defence systems.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s air force said Russia had launched 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight, mainly targeting the capital.<\/p>\n

While the country\u2019s air defences were able to repel most of these, 25 ballistics missiles and 12 drones struck 33 locations.<\/p>\n

Zelensky urged the US to grant licences to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles, saying these supplies were \u201can absolute and critical priority\u201d.<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha called on Ukraine\u2019s partners to send more air defence systems, saying the country needed \u201cnot only words of condemnation but concrete action to stop Russian terror\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russia also hit military bases in central and eastern Ukraine, according to the Ministry of Defence.<\/p>\n

It claimed to have targeted Ukrainian defence and energy infrastructure in response to what it called \u201cterrorist attacks launched by the Kyiv regime against civilian infrastructure\u201d in Russia.<\/p>\n

Kyiv has recently launched long-range attacks on Russian power stations from Moscow to the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

The attacks led to a rare confession by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country was facing fuel shortages.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s Sybiha said it would be \u201cimmoral\u201d to justify the Russian strikes as a response to Kyiv\u2019s long-range attacks on Russia. \u201cIn this war, there is an aggressor and a country defending itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Russia controls approximately one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, mostly seized in the first few months of its full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n

The post \u2018Most massive\u2019 Russian attack on Kyiv kills at least 18<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russian forces launched a major drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight, killing 18 people, in what the city\u2019s mayor has described as the \u201cmost massive attack\u201d on the Ukrainian capital. Vitaly Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning and said around 90 people were injured. He said an ambulance station was among the places […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}