Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
Russia launched one of the largest aerial attacks of the full-scale war overnight on June 2, targeting various Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, with missiles and drones. Across the country, at least 13 people have been killed and more than 100 others injured, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv bore the brunt of the attack. At least four people were killed and 64 others, including two children, were injured in the capital, the State Emergency Service said. Zelensky said 38 people remained hospitalized in Kyiv.
Dnipro also suffered heavy casualties. Nine people were killed, including a child, and 35 others injured in the central Ukrainian city, Zelensky said. Six more people remained unaccounted for as a search and rescue operation continued at a four-story apartment building that was partly destroyed.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russian forces launched 73 cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles, as well as 656 attack drones. Of those, 40 missiles and 602 drones were downed or intercepted. Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ignat said eight Zircon anti-ship missiles were used in the strike in two waves of four.
Thirty ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles, and 33 attack drones struck 38 locations, it added.
More than 500 State Emergency Service personnel were involved in response efforts across Ukraine, Zelensky said. Russian strikes also hit energy infrastructure in Kharkiv Oblast and critical infrastructure in Kharkiv, as well as targets in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia, Poltava, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Khmelnytskyi oblasts.
In the Podilskyi district, a nine-storey Soviet-era apartment building was damaged by what residents said was the blast wave from rocket debris falling nearby.
“What can I say? Putin is a dickhead,” 65-year-old pensioner Yevhen Dniprovskyi, told the Kyiv Independent, his face bloodied by shrapnel injuries.
Dniprovskyi was in his apartment with his wife during the attack. She was injured and taken to hospital. He shows pictures on his phone of the damage caused.
“This is our balcony. It’s just not there anymore.”
Municipal workers were already fixing the building’s power lines. Most of the windows on one side of the block were blown out, with several balconies completely gone.
“I’m in shock,” local business owner Marina Ostapenko told the Kyiv Independent.
“It all happened very quickly, just like that. I ran out of the apartment. On the second floor a woman couldn’t get out of her apartment, I couldn’t open it. And there was also a young man, a guy about 20, his leg was badly cut, there was a lot of blood.
“I held him, we bandaged him up there, and called an ambulance.”
Firefighters respond to the aftermath of Russia’s overnight missile and drone attack on Kyiv on June 2. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine)
Elsewhere in Kyiv, damage to 15-story and 24-story residential buildings was also reported in the city’s Solomianskyi district. In the Obolonskyi district, drone debris fell near a kindergarten and sparked a fire at a construction site, Tkachenko added.
Fallen debris also caused fires at gas stations in the Darnytskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts and at a commercial building in the Sviatoshynskyi district. Another fire was “raging” on the second and third floors of a commercial building in the Shevchenkivskyi district, Klitschko said.
Car fires and exterior damage were reported at a medical clinic in the Holosiivskyi district, while part of a business center collapsed, officials said.
Rescue operations have been completed in the Podilskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts, while firefighters have extinguished fires in the Obolonskyi, Darnytskyi, and Holosiivskyi districts, the State Emergency Service said.
The first explosion was heard in the capital at around 1:30 a.m. local time, just before an air raid alert was declared, a Kyiv Independent journalist on the ground reported. Additional waves of explosions were heard at 2:15 a.m., 4 a.m., and 7:20 a.m., followed by brief disruptions to the power supply, reporters said.
People take shelter at a metro station during an air alarm in Kyiv on June 2, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Multiple explosions were heard on June 2 as missiles rocked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, AFP journalists and officials said, with authorities urging residents to seek shelter. (Tetiana DZHAFAROVA / AFP via Getty Images)
The aftermath of a Russian attack on Dnipro overnight on June 2, 2026. (Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration/Telegram)
Communities in the surrounding Kyiv Oblast also came under attack overnight. Damage to homes, a warehouse, and a “non-residential” building were reported in Bucha and Vyshgorod, officials reported.
In Dnipro, photos and videos posted online show partially collapsed low-rise buildings in Dnipro. Regional Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said a boy born in 2023 was among the eight people killed and that at least 23 of those injured required hospitalization, including a 13-year-old girl.
Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov said 49 residential buildings had been damaged, with seven “practically completely destroyed.”
In Kharkiv, multiple districts of the city were struck by several drones and missiles, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported. Damage was reported to multi-story residential building, vehicles, as well as administrative buildings. A total of 10 people people were injured in the attack.
Three residents of the region suffered injuries in the attack, Kyiv Oblast Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said.
A building burns in Dnipro following the Russian attack on June 2, 2026. (Ukraine’s State Emergency Service)
Firefighters extinguish a fire at a burning building in Kharkiv following the Russian attack on June 2, 2026. (Ukraine’s State Emergency Service)
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the “only reason” for the overnight strike was “that Putin is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror.”
“Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this,” he added, calling on Ukraine’s partners to step up military assistance, increase sanctions on Russia, and advance Ukraine’s EU membership.
“Terrorists in Moscow must realise that their brutal attacks won’t bring them anywhere. That the price for their regime will only increase. That the only way out for Putin is to immediately end this war.”
Amid the attack, Poland’s Air Force said it had scrambled Polish and allied aircraft to protect Polish airspace.
Residents of Kyiv had been bracing for another attack for days. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on May 29 that Russia is preparing a new mass attack on Ukraine, citing Ukrainian intelligence reports.
“Please heed air raid alerts and stay safe,” he urged Ukrainians in his evening address.
The president reiterated the warning in his address the following night, saying that while Kyiv’s partners were communicating with Russia in hopes of preventing a large-scale assault, Ukrainians should stay vigilant.
On June 1, Zelensky again warned of a mass attack. “The intelligence warnings regarding Russian strikes remain in effect. A massive strike may happen — they have prepared it. Our defenders of the sky are ready 24/7, to the extent possible with the supplies currently available.”
The availability of those supplies has been a concern: Zelensky sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump on May 26, warning of Ukraine’s worsening shortage of air defense systems, particularly anti-ballistic missile capabilities.
Following the June 2 attack, Zelensky reiterated that appeal, calling for urgent U.S. assistance in supplying missiles for Patriot air defense systems and saying that Europe needs its own anti-ballistic missile defenses.
“If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic and other missile strikes, these attacks will continue. Europe needs its own anti-ballistic defense so that this war can finally end. And we urgently need help from the United States in supplying missiles for Patriot systems. We count on the support of our partners and effective responses to today’s attack,” he said.
The attack came after a series of public threats from Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 25 that Russia planned to strike Ukrainian “decision-making centers” and urged Washington to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement urging foreign citizens, including diplomats, to leave the city. No foreign embassies in Kyiv evacuated staff following the threats.
Moscow’s threats came in the wake of one of the largest strikes against Kyiv and the surrounding region in the past year, when Russia launched 90 missiles and 600 drones on May 24.
The attack struck Kyiv’s administrative and cultural core, damaging the Cabinet of Ministers (Ukraine’s government headquarters), the Foreign Ministry building, the Kyiv Opera Theater, the Ukrainian House, the Valeriy Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium, and the Chornobyl Museum, among other institutions.
Two people were killed and over 80 others injured in Kyiv alone, while a total of four people were killed and nearly 100 wounded across Ukraine.
The attack included the launch of an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), Russia’s much-touted novel weapons system.
Russia’s escalated bombing campaign coincides with stalled battlefield gains and a diplomatic impasse. In March 2026, Ukrainian troops launched counterattacks that successfully liberated most of the Russian-occupied areas of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Meanwhile, Russia’s personnel losses continue to climb, with U.K. intelligence on May 27 reporting an estimated death toll of 500,000 Russian soldiers since the start of the full-scale invasion.