Ukraine’s government headquarters in Kyiv was damaged for the first time since the start of the war, officials confirmed Sunday, after Russian forces launched one of the largest overnight barrages of missiles and drones to date.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the cabinet of ministers building sustained roof and upper floor damage and caught fire “due to an enemy attack.” At least four people were killed in the wave of strikes, including a baby and a young woman who died when a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv’s Svyatoshynsky district was hit.
Ukraine’s air force reported that more than 800 missiles and drones were launched, describing it as a record assault. Nine missiles and 56 drones struck 37 locations, with debris falling across multiple neighborhoods. President Volodymyr Zelensky said damage was recorded in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, and in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions.
“Such killings now, at a time when real diplomacy could have started a long time ago, are a deliberate crime and an attempt to prolong the war,” Zelensky said, urging stronger international action.
Russia’s defense ministry claimed its forces targeted Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex and transport infrastructure,” saying weapons depots were damaged. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko suggested that a drone may have struck the cabinet building after being intercepted, though details remain unclear.
The symbolic hit on the heavily fortified government district rattled residents. Witnesses reported smoke rising behind Independence Square, followed by cruise missiles flying at high speed before more explosions. Residents of apartment blocks described shattered windows and neighbors killed in the strikes. “At least we’re alive,” one woman told reporters, mourning the loss of a young mother and her child who had recently moved into the building.
Additional casualties were reported elsewhere. In Zaporizhzhia, 17 people were injured after a strike hit homes, a nursery, and other structures. Outside the city, a woman was killed in Novopavlivka, while another person died in Safonivka in the Sumy region. One fatality was also confirmed in Chernihiv.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said its drones struck Russia’s Druzhba oil pipeline, damaging a pumping station in the Bryansk region. Russia responded that its air defenses intercepted 69 Ukrainian drones across several areas, BBC reports.
The assault came days after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Western proposals for a “reassurance force” to secure Ukraine once a ceasefire is reached. At a Paris summit, French President Emmanuel Macron said 26 allied nations had pledged to deploy troops “by land, sea or air” to help secure Ukraine after hostilities end. Putin warned that any such forces would be “legitimate targets.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the latest strikes, saying they showed Putin “believes he can act with impunity” and “is not serious about peace.”
Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has left Moscow in control of roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, annexed in 2014.
