Russian Drone Hits Ukraine's Security Service HQ; Zelensky Orders 'Mirror' Response
A Russian drone crashed into the SBU headquarters in central Kyiv in broad daylight on Friday afternoon — aimed, President Zelensky said, “directly at the office of the Head of the Security Service”. Between five and nine people were hurt, according to the city’s mayor. “I instructed Poklad to deliver an appropriate, tangible response and, where possible, one that mirrors this strike,” Mr Zelensky said. His foreign minister called it “a major escalation… during a renewed push for peace — laying bare its true rejection of diplomacy”.
A drone finding the security chief’s own window, opposite St Sophia’s bell tower, is assassination-adjacent signalling of a precision the jet-drone campaign has not previously shown — and the target was not chosen idly: the SBU runs Ukraine’s deep-strike war, including the Spiderweb operation that burned Russian bombers worth billions, so Moscow has struck the office that hurts it most, two days before American envoys arrive. Mr Zelensky’s “mirror” instruction is unusually specific — a like-for-like promise against an equivalent Russian building that commits him publicly. The staff sheltering from a feared second strike in a wrecked café next door describe the new normal of a capital where daylight raids no longer surprise. Watch the weekend: a strike this pointed on mediation’s eve is either Moscow’s leverage play or its answer to the question the envoys were bringing.