At least eight killed in massive overnight Russian attack on Kyiv

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - KYIV — A wave of Russian missiles and drones hit Ukraine's capital Kyiv overnight, killing at least eight people in an attack that was still underway early on Monday.

Officials in Kyiv said residents were trapped inside a badly damaged residential building near the city center after the attack.

Reuters witnesses reported a series of explosions in and around the capital and said air defences were also in action against Russian drones.

In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.

A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's City Military Administration in a post on Telegram.

“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” he said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko stated that air defenses were in operation and urged people to remain in shelters.

"People are trapped on the seventh to ninth floors," Klitschko wrote, adding that debris from intercepted drones had also fallen on another residential building and in other districts of the city of about three million people.

Seven people were killed in Kyiv, and one in Bucha district northwest of the capital, authorities said, while at least 34 were wounded in Kyiv and its surrounding areas.

"There are no words that can ease this pain," Tkachenko said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had warned hours earlier of another large-scale Russian attack on the city.

He warned that Moscow could be planning further attacks ahead of this week's NATO summit in Turkiye, where he is expected to hold talks with US President Donald Trump on the war.

The assault was the second on the capital and its surroundings in less than a week and came as both sides increased long-range attacks, underlining the growing reach of the war more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Meanwhile, in Crimea, Sevastopol was temporarily left without electricity following what local authorities described as a Ukrainian attack on energy infrastructure.

"Following an enemy attack on energy infrastructure near Sevastopol, our city was temporarily left without electricity," Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev, appointed by Moscow, wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted energy facilities inside Russia in recent weeks in an effort to weaken the Kremlin's war effort.

It has also struck at Moscow-controlled territory in Ukraine that predates the current invasion.

Zelensky also said fighting continued for the key eastern town of Kostyantynivka despite Russian claims that it had captured the settlement.

Moscow announced earlier this week that its forces had taken the town, a strategic gateway to other important hubs in the Donetsk region. Kyiv rejected the claim as false.

"Fighting is also continuing for Kostyantynivka, which Putin has already claimed as his own, but it is obvious that he will never dare to appear there," Zelensky said.

The town, which had a pre-war population of around 78,000, has long been a major objective of Russia's campaign in eastern Ukraine.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Ukraine had rejected a proposal for a six-hour ceasefire in and around Kostyantynivka that Moscow said would have allowed it to hand over the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

Zelensky renewed calls for Western partners to bolster Ukraine’s air defences, particularly by supplying more Patriot missiles, saying that failing to replenish them only emboldens Russia to prolong its four-year war, in a post on Telegram late Sunday.