Why explosions kept echoing through Kyiv after Russia launched missiles and drones across Ukraine
Russia's attack on Ukraine stretched into daylight, hitting Kyiv, homes, businesses, power sites and even Moldova's airspace.
Explosions were still being heard around Kyiv on Thursday morning after Russia launched an overnight barrage that carried on into daylight. The attack reached well beyond the capital, with officials reporting deaths, injuries and damage to homes, businesses, energy facilities and transport links across Ukraine.
Kyiv was still hearing blasts after sunrise
Russia fired missiles and drones at cities across Ukraine in an overnight assault that continued into the day on Thursday, with explosions still echoing around Kyiv through the morning.
In the capital, police said four districts were hit during the night. Residential buildings, a school and a medical facility were damaged, though no casualties were reported there.
Russia's Defense Ministry described the operation as a massive strike on targets in nine Ukrainian cities. It said the sites were military-related and included industrial facilities, oil refineries, logistics hubs and port infrastructure.
The damage reached homes, schools and rail services
Ukrainian officials said civilian areas were also hit. Regional authorities in Sumy reported that one person was killed and four others were injured in an overnight strike.
Elsewhere, officials said a 78-year-old woman was killed in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and another person died in the northern Kharkiv region, with at least 14 more people wounded elsewhere.
The southern Odesa region also came under a major attack that local authorities said lasted more than seven hours. Damage there included a 16-story residential building, two educational facilities and a grain elevator.
In the central Poltava region, officials said industrial facilities and energy infrastructure were struck. Ukraine's state rail company said some trains were delayed by more than 17 hours after the attack.
Businesses and the power grid were also in the line of fire
The barrage did not only hit public buildings and housing. Ukrainian companies said Russian drones struck three large distribution centers, destroying depots used by a toy store chain and a confectionery company, while damaging another operated by an electronics retailer.
Ukraine also said Russia kept up its effort to damage the country's power system before winter. Naftogaz, which operates a combined heat and power plant in the southern Kherson region, said four glide bombs destroyed generating equipment there and forced the plant to shut down.
That spread of targets fits what Ukrainian officials say has become a pattern. They say Russia stockpiles missiles and then launches major attacks every few days in the hope of exhausting Ukraine's air defenses through sheer weight of numbers.
Why Ukraine says these strikes are getting harder to stop
Ukraine says it is desperately short of US-made Patriot missiles, one of the systems capable of countering Russian ballistic missiles. Officials have also said fast-flying jet-powered drones have added another challenge during the full-scale invasion.
Ukraine's air force said its defenses shot down or suppressed seven Russian ballistic missiles, though it did not explain how. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was continuing to invest in missiles and expand its war, and argued that more countermeasures were needed.
He pointed to promises by European countries to provide more air defense assistance and said those measures should also be supplemented by additional ballistic missile defense packages through European purchases of weapons from the United States.
The wider fallout reached beyond Ukraine
The overnight attack also fed fears outside Ukraine that the war could spill wider across the region. Moldova's Defense Ministry said five drones breached its airspace, though it did not say who fired them.
Zelenskyy was due to visit neighboring Moldova on Thursday for the country's national day marking its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
The cross-border tension comes as Ukraine continues to launch long-range drones into Russia almost nightly. Ukraine's General Staff said plane-launched missiles struck Russia's main and backup command posts near the eastern city of Donetsk. Russia, for its part, said its air defenses shot down 267 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, the Crimean Peninsula, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
