Russian strikes kill nine in Kyiv as Ukraine sinks ship

Russian ballistic missiles slammed into Kyiv before dawn Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens, as Ukraine pressed Washington for more air defenses and said it had sunk a sanctioned Russian container ship in the Black Sea.

“This was a horrific night for Kyiv,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on social media after explosions shook the capital around 1:30 a.m. local time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched 35 missiles and 185 attack drones, and that Ukraine shot down only one of 27 ballistic missiles because of its dwindling supply of Patriot interceptors.

The bombardment hit five areas of Kyiv, setting fires and damaging apartment blocks, commercial buildings and infrastructure. Klitschko said a residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district was partially destroyed, trapping people inside, while AFP reported more than 10 explosions across the city. Power cuts were reported in some areas.

Ukraine’s emergency services said the heaviest toll was in the Darnytskyi district, where seven people were killed and 14 were injured, including two children. In the Solomianskyi district, officials said two people died and eight were injured, also including two children, after a five-story residential building was partially destroyed. Rescue crews pulled 35 residents from upper floors there, NPR reported.

Lithuania’s foreign ministry said a missile landed near its embassy in Kyiv, breaking windows and scattering debris across the compound. Lithuania’s foreign minister also said the embassy sustained damage when missiles hit nearby.

Russia’s Defense Ministry described the attack as a large-scale strike on military-industrial and logistics sites in Kyiv, according to Russian media reports cited by NPR.

The Kyiv attack followed another Russian strike two days earlier. The BBC reported that a suspected Russian cruise missile landed in Poland during a widespread attack on Ukraine that killed at least eight people, including six members of one family. NPR reported that a separate Russian strike two days earlier killed at least 10 people elsewhere in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Ukraine urgently needs Patriot missile interceptors, the only weapon in its arsenal capable of downing Russian ballistic missiles. “Every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people,” he wrote after the latest strikes, adding in a separate post Friday that “air defence — specifically Patriot interceptors against ballistic missiles — remains a top priority.”

Zelenskyy met President Donald Trump in Washington this week to urge the United States to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriot interceptor missiles. He later said he had a “good” phone call with Vice President JD Vance and also held talks with executives at Lockheed Martin, which makes the Patriot system, NPR reported.

Trump had previously signaled that the United States would allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot systems, but at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday he said no agreement had been reached. “We have not agreed to that,” Trump said, adding that the United States had to be “very careful about letting somebody build them” because sharing the technology would be “a big step.”

“I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you,” Trump said.

Separately, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian drones sank the Russian-owned container ship Yanina in the Black Sea, saying the 100,000-tonne-capacity vessel had been “sent to the bottom.” Russia confirmed the attack through state-owned nuclear operator Rosatom, which owns the ship.

Rosatom said all 17 crew members were rescued and were in “satisfactory” condition. The company said the ship had been carrying civilian goods, including frozen food and construction materials, and was attacked 130 miles from Novorossiysk. “Such an attack cannot be interpreted as anything other than piracy and robbery,” Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev said.

Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian drones struck three oil refineries overnight in Russia’s Bashkortostan region, about 1,000 miles from the front lines, NPR reported. Ukraine has escalated long-range strikes in recent months, including attacks on Russian logistics hubs and retail warehouses it says are used to supply military equipment to Russian forces.