Kyiv Toll Nears Forty as Russia Strikes Ukraine Again Overnight
Kyiv observes a day of mourning today after the death toll from Thursday’s eleven-hour barrage rose to at least three dozen — the deadliest attack on the capital this year. Fresh Russian strikes overnight killed four more people, including a girl under two in the Sumy region, and injured ten. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted the bombardment was aimed “exclusively against military or military-linked targets”, despite some twenty residential buildings being hit; Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it a “night of horror”.
Rescue work through the night raised the toll steadily, with most of a nine-storey block in the Darnytskyi district collapsed. Moscow frames the campaign as retaliation for Ukraine’s weeks-long strikes on Russian refineries, which have produced genuine fuel shortages inside Russia. Roughly a third of the missiles fired were ballistic — the type only Patriot systems reliably intercept — and Ukraine’s interceptor stocks are running short, which is why President Zelensky is pressing partners to accelerate deliveries and seeking licences to build interceptors at home. Watch next week’s NATO summit in Turkey, where both Trump and Zelensky are expected.