Russia launches massive missile attack on Kyiv, hitting residential buildings

Russia launched waves of ballistic missiles at Kyiv early Wednesday, hitting residential buildings and triggering fires in a 20-storey apartment block and other structures. The head of Kyiv’s military administration said Russia was “once again massively attacking” the city, while Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the assault reached deep into civilian areas.

UNN said the attack set fires in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi, Shevchenkivskyi and Darnytskyi districts, and flames later broke out in residential buildings and warehouses across the city. The strike showed that Moscow still had both the reach and the intent to hit urban targets in the Ukrainian capital, even as air defenses were already under strain from repeated attacks in the days before.

The latest barrage came after an overnight strike on Aug. 1 killed at least nine people and wounded 33 others. Residents were trapped after a partially collapsed building caught fire, turning a single impact into a wider rescue operation for firefighters and emergency crews trying to reach people inside the wreckage.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said those deaths underscored Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles, and Ukraine’s envoy to the United States said, “We need the missiles.” Kyiv had already been hit by repeated missile attacks on July 29 and July 31, and ABC News said Russia launched 381 missiles into Ukraine in July, a wartime record for the scale of missile strikes.

The pattern has raised pressure on Ukraine’s air-defense network and on its Western partners as Russia continues to test the capital with concentrated salvos. In a separate deadly strike on July 30, Russia likely used a North Korean missile against a Ukrainian village, adding another sign that Moscow’s arsenal and targeting choices were widening even as Kyiv’s apartment blocks, warehouses and district streets stayed in the line of fire.