Russia launched its largest combined air attack on Kyiv since the end of last winter's heating season, sending waves of attack drones and ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital and its surrounding region overnight. Ukrainian officials say at least four civilians were killed, including a child, as the strikes hammered energy infrastructure and knocked out power across parts of the city.
The assault is the latest escalation in Moscow's weeks-long campaign against Ukraine's power grid — a terror-bombing strategy aimed at breaking civilian morale as autumn sets in and winter approaches.
Nearly 190 drones and ballistic missiles hit the capital region
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia threw close to 190 attack drones as well as ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, with the Kyiv region taking the brunt of the attack. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi described the barrage as the first attack of such combined scale since the end of the last heating season, underscoring how the Kremlin is returning to the winter energy-terror playbook that devastated Ukrainian cities in previous years.
Air raid alerts kept Kyiv under cover for much of the night. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported fires breaking out in residential areas, with private homes, a shop and a warehouse damaged. According to city officials, two women were killed in the Sviatoshynskyi district, where a dozen homes were damaged, and a third person was killed in the Solomianskyi district after a warehouse was hit. In the surrounding Kyiv region, Governor Tymur Tkachenko said a missile and drone strike killed a child and wounded three more people, while damaging infrastructure, houses, warehouses and cars.
Power grid takes a direct hit
Ukraine's energy system absorbed the worst of the blow. DTEK, the country's largest private energy company, said its crews restored electricity to about 8,000 households on Kyiv's left bank, while emergency teams were still working to repair the wider damage. State grid operator Ukrenergo reported outages in Kyiv and other regions and urged residents to avoid using power-hungry appliances.
Zelensky said critical infrastructure was also struck in the Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad and Rivne regions, confirming the attack was far broader than the capital alone. "Each interceptor missile really saves lives," the president said. "And the closer to winter, the more such protection is needed. We must do everything to ensure that Russia's bet on ballistic and drone terror does not play out."
The scale of the assault forced NATO's eastern flank to react: both Romania and Poland scrambled military jets to protect their airspace during the night's attacks, their defense ministries confirmed — a reminder that Russia's terror campaign against Ukraine keeps spilling to the alliance's borders.
Russia claims strikes on data centre and power plants
Russia's defence ministry claimed its forces carried out a "massive" overnight strike, asserting they hit a communications centre in Kyiv, energy facilities in the Kyiv region that it said support military production, and port infrastructure at Izmail in the Odesa region. Moscow said it struck the De Novo data centre in Kyiv — which it described as a major internet traffic exchange hub — as well as the Kyivska power substation near Nalyvaikivka, the Kyiv hydroelectric plant in Vyshhorod, the Trypilska thermal power plant and an energy storage facility in Horenychi.
The ministry also claimed it hit an industrial complex at the port of Izmail used to receive and transport military cargo and fuel, and a dry cargo vessel in the northwestern Black Sea it alleged was carrying military equipment to Odesa. These claims come from the Russian state and could not be independently verified — a standard caveat for every Moscow communique that routinely inflates the damage it inflicts while downplaying the civilian cost.
A terror campaign timed for winter
The attack fits the Kremlin's established pattern: degrade Ukraine's energy infrastructure just as temperatures drop, maximizing civilian suffering in the hope of forcing political concessions. But the pattern has failed for three winters in a row. Each previous campaign was met with rapid repairs by Ukrainian engineers, emergency aid from European partners, and an unbroken will to resist.
What has changed is the scale and the directness of the targeting. Striking data centres and hydroelectric plants in and around the capital — alongside homes, shops and warehouses — is not military strategy. It is a deliberate attempt to make life unlivable for millions of civilians, and it is precisely the kind of war crime Russia's leadership continues to order with impunity.
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