Russian drones struck a 24-story apartment building in Kyiv, a university building in Kremenchuk, warehouses, and hypermarkets overnight on 21 October, killing two people in the capital and an elderly couple near Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. The attack went well beyond Ukraine’s power grid, hitting places where people live, study, and shop. Over the past day, Russian strikes also killed three more civilians and injured dozens across several oblasts.

Russia has kept up nightly drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities through the autumn, mostly aimed at the energy system. It struck Ukraine’s energy 76 times during a US-declared truce, and fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid three days after Washington announced it. This time the targets also included homes, a university, warehouses, and shops.

Overnight, Russia launched 186 Shahed-type and other attack drones, 88 of them jet-powered, along with Iskander-K cruise missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Air defenses downed or jammed 150 drones. Hits were recorded at 27 locations, and debris fell at 13 more.

Two killed on the 20th floor in Kyiv

A drone hit a 24-story residential building in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district at the level of the 20th floor, starting a fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The fire spread over about 70 square meters, and rescuers found the bodies of two people while clearing debris, the State Emergency Service said. Two people were injured and hospitalized, Klitschko said, including a 46-year-old man who was walking past the building, according to the police.

In the Desnianskyi district, seven parked cars caught fire, the State Emergency Service said; police put the number at about 10. The evening before, drones hit a warehouse building in Desnianskyi and a transport facility in Solomianskyi district.

An elderly couple killed near Kharkiv

In the village of Korotych near Kharkiv, Russian drones killed an 81-year-old woman and an 83-year-old man, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Rescuers recovered their bodies from the rubble of their house, the State Emergency Service said. Eleven people, including a two-month-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, were treated for acute stress, and 13 houses were damaged.

A university, warehouses, and hypermarkets

In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a building of the Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University, setting it on fire, the State Emergency Service said. Three people were injured, including a 16-year-old who was hospitalized with a concussion, Poltava Oblast Governor Vitalii Diakivnych said. In the Poltava community, drones damaged an administrative building and warehouses.

In Lviv Oblast, an attack set fire to an enterprise in a village in Lviv district and injured two people, while a house was damaged in a neighboring village, the State Emergency Service said. In Uman, drones hit a hypermarket and damaged a hotel, injuring one person, Cherkasy Oblast Governor Ihor Taburets said.

On the evening of 20 October, a drone hit an Epicentr hypermarket in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast, injuring eight people, acting Governor Heorhii Reshetilov said. Russia also struck a hypermarket in Rivne Oblast several times that day, injuring four and forcing rescuers to pull back while they fought the fire, the State Emergency Service said.

More dead and injured over the past day

The overnight strikes followed a day of attacks. In Kyiv, Russian strikes on 20 October killed one person and injured 21, three of them seriously, Klitschko said. An administrative building caught fire, rescuers freed four people trapped on its upper floors, and a healthcare facility was damaged, the State Emergency Service said. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, two men were killed and seven people injured that day, regional officials said.

In Kharkiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day injured 11 more people in Kharkiv, Derhachi, and Shestakove, Syniehubov said. In Kherson Oblast, 13 people were injured, three of them children, the regional administration reported. In the Chernihiv region, an 89-year-old woman and a young woman were hurt in strikes on villages and on Novhorod-Siverskyi, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, and a 21-year-old woman was injured in the Sumy community, according to the Sumy regional administration.

More than 5,000 subscribers lost power in Volyn Oblast’s Lutsk district, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. In Ternopil Oblast’s Kremenets district, 7,949 subscribers remained without power after earlier Russian strikes on energy facilities, the regional administration reported.

Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight into 7 October, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 30. Kyiv, Pryluky, Kremenchuk and several other cities were struck as Moscow used ballistic and cruise missiles alongside 130 attack drones, with energy infrastructure among the principal targets.

Russia fired 70 missiles and 130 drones at Ukraine during one of the largest combined aerial attacks of recent months, striking Kyiv and at least a dozen regions between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 11 people had been killed and 34 wounded in the attacks. He said energy infrastructure was among Russia’s principal targets and described ballistic missiles as the most difficult element of the assault for Ukrainian air defences. Reuters reported the remarks and casualty figures.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force’s preliminary assessment, the attack began at about 6pm on 6 October and involved a mixture of ballistic, anti-ship and cruise missiles launched from Russian territory, aircraft and the Caspian Sea. Russia also deployed 130 Shahed-type, Gerbera and decoy drones, including 46 jet-powered attack drones.

By 9am, Ukrainian forces said they had destroyed or electronically suppressed 161 aerial targets: 117 drones, 39 cruise missiles and five ballistic or other high-speed missiles. Six additional cruise missiles were still being assessed. Missile and drone impacts were recorded at 18 locations, while debris from intercepted weapons fell at another five.

The main directions of attack were the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Residential buildings hit in Pryluky and Kyiv

Some of the heaviest civilian casualties were reported in Pryluky, in Chernihiv region, where a missile struck a multi-storey residential building. Emergency officials initially reported four people killed and 20 injured, including three children. Rescue teams continued searching the damaged structure on Wednesday morning. Associated Press reported on the rescue operation and casualties.

In Kyiv, ballistic missiles reached the capital during the night, with explosions reported shortly after 3am. Two people were killed. A non-residential building in the Podilskyi district was hit and caught fire, while garages burned in Darnytskyi district. The wider Kyiv region was simultaneously attacked by missiles and drones, damaging three production and warehouse facilities in the Obukhiv district.

Two people were also killed and seven wounded in Kremenchuk, in Poltava region, where missiles and drones struck the city and surrounding district. Damage was reported to residential buildings and an industrial facility. Further strikes were recorded in Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Oleksandriia.

Zelenskyy said Russia had deliberately sought to inflict serious damage on Ukraine’s energy system. “One of the key targets was our energy infrastructure,” he said, adding that further air-defence supplies had become an immediate requirement.

The attack came only hours after the Ukrainian president said intelligence services had obtained information indicating that Russia was preparing another major aerial operation. In his address on Tuesday evening, he urged Ukrainians to respond to air-raid warnings and said the country’s ability to withstand the expected attack would depend partly on the availability of Western-supplied defensive systems. His latest statements are available through the official presidential website.

The scale and composition of Wednesday’s barrage again exposed the pressure being placed on Ukraine’s layered air-defence network. EU Today has previously examined the shortage of Patriot interceptors capable of engaging ballistic missiles, which travel considerably faster than cruise missiles and drones and leave defence crews much less time to respond.

Russia’s use of different weapons within the same attack also forces Ukraine to employ several types of interception simultaneously. Cheap drones can be engaged by mobile fire groups, electronic warfare and interceptor drones, while ballistic missiles generally require more sophisticated systems such as Patriot.

Moscow’s Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” using long-range precision weapons and drones against Ukrainian military-industrial facilities. It claimed that missile and drone production and storage sites, as well as port and ship-repair infrastructure, had been targeted. Those claims could not independently establish the nature of individual sites hit. Ukrainian authorities meanwhile documented damage to homes, businesses, energy facilities and other civilian infrastructure.

The overnight assault follows several weeks of intensified strikes as Ukraine approaches another winter under pressure on its power network. During German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Kyiv at the weekend, Berlin announced a new assistance package of more than €1.3 billion, including military support and funding intended to help protect and repair the country’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter.

Wednesday’s attack demonstrated why those two areas — air defence and the resilience of the electricity system — have become increasingly closely connected. Even with more than 160 incoming weapons intercepted or suppressed, missiles and drones reached targets across several regions, leaving casualties and damage hundreds of kilometres apart.