![\"Smoke](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AFP__20260702__B8YR7CQ__v1__HighRes__UkraineRussiaConflictWar-1782956877.jpg\")
Smoke rises during a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Thursday morning, setting off fires and causing casualties [Sergei Supinsky\/AFP]<\/p>\nAt least 13 people have been killed and dozens injured in a Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv, which came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of an impending \u201cmassive\u201d attack by Moscow.<\/p>\n
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko \u2060said 13 people were killed and at least 86 injured in attacks on Thursday, while damage included six floors of an apartment building that had partially collapsed after a direct hit from a Russian projectile.<\/p>\n
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Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the capital\u2019s military administration, said at least two children were among the injured and three dozen locations across the city had been damaged in the attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cKyiv is under attack from ballistic missiles and UAVs,\u201d Mayor Klitschko wrote earlier, using the acronym for unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.<\/p>\n
Klitschko also reported people were trapped \u2060in a damaged nine-storey residential building, and a large part of a high-rise apartment building that sustained a direct strike had collapsed.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia attacked the country with 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight. It said on Telegram \u200cthat air defence units downed or neutralised 48 missiles and 476 \u2060drones, but 25 \u2060ballistic missiles and 12 drones hit \u206033 locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe express our condolences to all the victims, families who lost their relatives and loved ones in this terrible terrorist attack. We will take revenge!\u201d it added in a statement.<\/p>\n
According to Al Jazeera\u2019s Audrey MacAlpine, drones began entering the skies over Kyiv just past midnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could hear those interceptions overhead, and then very, very large explosions \u2026 around 2am,\u201d she said, reporting from the Ukrainian capital.<\/p>\n
People suspected an attack would take place, so many people were preemptively sheltering in the city\u2019s subway systems, MacAlpine said.<\/p>\n
Dozens of missiles hit at least 30 locations in the city, she added.<\/p>\n
Smoke rises during a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Thursday morning, setting off fires and causing casualties [Sergei Supinsky\/AFP]<\/p>\n
Russia has routinely launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, including the capital, during its more than four-year invasion. The war is Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n
The Russian Defence Ministry said on Telegram on Thursday that it carried out a \u201cmassive attack\u201d on Kyiv and other locations using long-range, high-precision air, land- and sea-launched weapons and drones.<\/p>\n
The ministry said it hit military and energy facilities around Kyiv, as well as military airports in several regions including Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk, in what it called retaliation for Ukraine\u2019s attack on civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Journalists with the AFP news agency in the central and eastern districts of Kyiv reported hearing more than a dozen explosions as the Ukrainian Air Force warned that ballistic missiles were approaching the city.<\/p>\n
Pictures \u2060shared on unofficial Telegram channels showed city residents crowding into underground stations to take cover from the Russian strikes.<\/p>\n
In the streets, residents were seen making their way to the shelters, carrying sleeping mats under their arms, according to AFP.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy issues warning before Russian attack<\/p>\n
The deadly strikes on Kyiv came just hours after Zelenskyy said he was cutting short a visit to Ireland, warning of an imminent \u201cmassive Russian strike\u201d and urging Ukrainians to take shelter.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we have information about another massive Russian strike; we have relevant intelligence data,\u201d Zelenskyy said during a joint news conference in Dublin with Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Zelenskyy said: \u201cImmediately after this conversation, I am returning to Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called on citizens to be \u201cespecially careful\u201d and \u201cstay safe and protect your families and children\u201d by heeding air raid alerts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has been preparing a massive strike against Ukraine for some time. That is exactly the threat we are facing tonight,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy also accused Russia of \u201ccompletely refusing to end the war\u201d it launched in February 2022, despite Ukrainian efforts through \u201call possible official and unofficial channels\u201d to convey readiness for \u201cmeetings and meaningful negotiations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Putin \u201csees only further aggression against Ukraine and against other neighbours and Europe as a whole\u201d, Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n
The attack came ahead of Zelenskyy\u2019s upcoming attendance at a NATO conference to request more air defence, said MacAlpine.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll specifically be looking at \u201cPac-2 and Pac-3, the American-made interceptor missile, really the only weapon that many would say could very effectively intercept things like ballistic missiles, things like these anti-ships, the aircon missiles, which travel \u2026 faster than the speed of sound,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While Ukraine has become quite adept at intercepting things like drones, \u201ctheir Achilles heel remains in intercepting these ballistic threats\u201d, which caused the greatest amount of damage in the overnight attacks, said MacAlpine.<\/p>\n
Amid the attacks on Ukraine, neighbouring Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets on \u2060Thursday as a preventive measure before calling them back, saying no airspace violation was recorded.<\/p>\n
In Russia, one person was killed, four people were wounded and an industrial facility was damaged in a drone attack on the Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Thursday. The region is home to the NORSI oil refinery, one of Russia\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n
In the Russian Belgorod region bordering\u00a0Ukraine, a man was killed and his wife injured after a drone hit their home, local authorities said separately on Telegram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least 13 people have been killed and dozens injured in a Russian missile and drone attack on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8721,274908,3456,893,43,44,6639,22373,41,39,42,40,10612,19309,8725],"class_list":["post-774960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-conflict","tag-drone-strikes","tag-europe","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}