Several buildings were damaged in the attack and caught fire.Image: keystone
Almost 20 people die in Russian attacks with drones and missiles on the Ukrainian capital Kiev and other parts of the country. There are more than 100 injured.
June 2, 2026, 06:09June 2, 2026, 2:35 p.m
Violent explosions woke people in Kyiv from their sleep during the night. At least six people were killed and 66 others injured in the city of three million, as Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. According to Klitschko, three children were among the injured.
Several buildings were damaged and caught fire. Many residents sought refuge in subway stations and air raid shelters. There were also brief power outages and problems with the water supply.
There were also brief power outages and problems with the water supply.Image: keystone
According to Klitschko, a multi-story residential building collapsed after an attack in the Podil district. It is feared that people are buried under the rubble. Elsewhere, an attack damaged the upper floors of a 15-story apartment building. There are several fires in the city area. The cleanup work continues.
Dnipro is hit hard
According to authorities, at least twelve people were killed and 37 others injured in the nighttime attack in the city of Dnipro. The bodies of a woman and an eight-year-old boy were recently pulled from the rubble in the city of over a million inhabitants, wrote the military governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Olexander Hanscha, on Telegram. In total, the Russian military killed at least three children in the attack.
The number of victims could rise here too, as rescue workers are still searching for dead and survivors under the collapsed houses.
Damage in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia
According to authorities, at least ten people were injured in the war-torn city of Kharkiv near the Russian border. In the Kharkiv region, according to the state gas company Naftogaz, a “key object” of the company was attacked first with drones and then with rockets. Naftogaz did not provide any information about the damage – the company only emphasized that there were no victims. In addition, a locomotive was attacked by a drone in Kharkiv. A railway worker was injured, the railway said.
Russia also attacked targets in the city of Zaporizhia. Several residential buildings were damaged, and military governor Ivan Fedorov did not provide any information about possible victims.
In many regions, power outages were the result of the Russian attacks. In order to avoid overloading the power grid, the utility Ukrenergo called for large power guzzlers to only be used with a large share of solar power between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Moscow used drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the attacks, including the hypersonic Zircon weapon. Moscow, for its part, spoke generally of “high-precision weapons.” Because of the attack, the Polish Air Force was also deployed.
Moscow: Attacks against military targets
The Russian Defense Ministry described the attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks. The evening before, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin had accused Kiev of “crimes against children and young people” at a meeting of the National Security Council.
Putin’s statement came in response to a drone attack at the end of May on a dormitory in the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. 21 young people – mostly vocational students – were killed in the attack. Kiev has “given the conflict a new quality,” claimed Putin, even though Russian attacks in Ukraine have already caused significantly higher casualties among the civilian population on several occasions.
This time too, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the attacks were only aimed at military targets in the neighboring country. The strikes with hypersonic weapons, ballistic missiles and drones were carried out against “arms industry enterprises in Kiev, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv and Dnipro, in the Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions, as well as against fuel and transport infrastructure objects used in the interests of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” it said in a statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made a similar statement: “Systematic strikes are being carried out against the military infrastructure,” he claimed. If Ukraine wants to end the war, President Volodymyr “Zelenskyy must order his armed forces to leave the territory of the Russian regions.” Russia has annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia without complete control and lays claim specifically to the Donbass.
Attack follows Zelensky’s clear warnings
Just ten days ago, Russia massively attacked Kiev with ballistic missiles and drones. Zelensky has warned several times since the end of last week of another massive Russian airstrike. He also admitted that a lack of ammunition was causing problems for the Ukrainian air defense system.
After the attack, he again called on the West to supply anti-aircraft missiles. The lack of them is actually a signal for the Russians to continue such combined attacks, Zelenskyj wrote on Telegram.