A police officer throws fragments of a Shahed drone from the balcony of a house damaged in a Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2026. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
Editor’s note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
At least seven people, including two children, were killed and 57 others injured in Russian attacks on Kyiv on Sept. 25 as of 8 p.m. local time, local authorities said.
Russia continued its relentless drone attacks on Kyiv, striking a 16-story residential building in the central Pecherskyi district overnight, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring seven people. The drone hit the building between the 10th and 11th floors, according to the National Police.
Twenty-five people, including two children, were hospitalized, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at around 4 p.m.
Authorities announced the drone threat around 4:50 a.m., shortly after air raid alarms had sounded over a missile threat.
The boy who was killed was an Israeli citizen, while his mother was also injured in the attack, Israel’s Foreign Ministry in Ukraine said.
“There was no alarm — just a muffled explosion. We were asleep and woke up immediately. I grabbed the dog, and we ran into the hallway,” Yana, a real estate agent, told the Kyiv Independent.
“We try to put it out of our minds and stay composed. But lately, our morale has taken a hit.”
A Russian drone struck a 16-story residential building in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district, damaging several upper floors and causing a fire, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2026. (Kostiantyn Liberov / Libkos / Getty Images)
Ivan, a retiree who lives in the damaged building, said he never expected it to be hit and initially thought the strike had occurred elsewhere.
“I didn’t even consider that it had hit our building. There was no tremor, just a loud explosion,” Ivan told the Kyiv Independent.
“The attacks are nonstop right now. We see the missiles flying, we see the Shaheds flying, but they’ve never hit us,” he said. “And now this tragedy has happened — it hit a place we never expected it to hit.”
A commercial building was damaged in the city’s Podilskyi district as a result of being hit by a Russian drone, and another building in the Solomianskyi district was damaged by drone debris, Klitschko reported.
A Russian drone strike damages the upper floor of the administrative building of Ukraine’s High Council of Justice, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2026. (Kostiantyn Liberov / Libkos / Getty Images)
At around 9:30 a.m. local time, Kyiv residents were placed under another air raid alert, followed by an explosion. Klitschko said a Russian drone struck a five-story non-residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district.
By approximately 2:30 p.m., the capital had been placed under an air raid alert for the seventh time since the beginning of the day.
During the daytime attack, a drone hit an office building in the Solomianskyi district, killing four people and injuring seven others, including a child, in the building’s parking lot, according to preliminary reports.
A medical facility was also damaged in the Solomianskyi district. Three people, including a child, were hospitalized after being injured nearby, Klitshchko said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families of those killed and injured in the attacks.
According to Zelensky, a warehouse used by McDonald’s in the city of Brovary in Kyiv Oblast was also damaged during the attack.
“The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation operation: American and other businesses, data centers, internet providers — for Russia, ordinary life in and of itself is simply a target,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“All of this undermines people’s ability to stay connected, study, and work.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, damage from Russian attacks on data centers in Kyiv and the resulting technical failures temporarily took electronic information boards at public transport stops in the western city of Lutsk out of service, according to the city’s local authorities.
“Currently, specialists are working to restore the operation of the relevant infrastructure and services,” the Lutsk City Council said on Telegram, adding that the electronic boards would be restored once the situation stabilizes.
The night prior, on Sept. 24, Russian ballistic missiles targeted Kyiv, where two people were killed, and 8 others were injured as explosions rocked the city in an attack that damaged a maternity hospital and residential buildings.
Russia launched 282 attack drones of various types overnight, including jet-powered drones, as well as Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander-M, S-400, and KN-23 ballistic missiles, the Air Force reported.