Kyiv residents pick through rubble after deadly Russian barrage

Residents of Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district spent Thursday morning stepping over broken glass, twisted metal, and shattered concrete after a Russian overnight barrage of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and Shahed drones ripped through their neighbourhood, killing at least four people and wounding more than a dozen others.

Scene of destruction

By dawn, the streets looked like something out of a demolition site. Facades had been blown clean off apartment blocks, exposing living rooms still holding furniture, children’s toys, family photographs. Emergency crews worked through the early hours, and by 7 a.m. local time, at least three multi-storey residential buildings had been confirmed damaged, with one five-storey block partially collapsed on its eastern wing.

Olha Petrenko, 61, stood outside what used to be her entrance hall, a plastic bag of salvaged clothes in one hand, a framed photo in the other. She didn’t know where she’d sleep that night. “I heard the sirens, I went to the corridor like they tell us,” she said. “And then everything just shook.”

Scale of the attack

Ukrainian air force officials said Russia launched more than 70 aerial objects overnight, including at least 14 ballistic missiles and around 50 Shahed-type drones. Air defences intercepted a significant portion of them, but enough got through to cause serious damage across multiple districts of the capital. It’s one of the heaviest strikes on Kyiv in several months.

The attack wasn’t limited to the city centre. Suburbs to the west also reported impacts, and authorities in two neighbouring oblasts confirmed drone wreckage falling on open ground.

Emergency response

More than 200 emergency personnel were deployed across Kyiv by mid-morning. Rescuers pulled two people from debris in Solomianskyi in the hours after the strike. Both were hospitalised in serious condition. A city official confirmed that at least 47 apartments across the district had been rendered uninhabitable, and temporary shelter was being arranged at a local school and community centre.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko visited the site Thursday morning and called the strike a deliberate targeting of civilians.

“Russia knows exactly what it is hitting. These are homes. Families. Children,” he said.

What comes next

Still, residents were already beginning the grim work of salvage. Some carried out mattresses. Others photographed damage for insurance and government compensation claims. A few just stood and stared.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said it had opened a war crimes investigation into the overnight strikes. And Kyiv city authorities warned that structural assessments of affected buildings could take several days, meaning hundreds of residents may remain displaced well into next week.

For now, the people of Solomianskyi are doing what Ukrainians have grown grimly accustomed to doing. Picking up the pieces. Starting again.