Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the Ukraine war overnight into Sunday, deploying more than 800 drones and striking a government building in Kyiv for the first time.
An infant was among at least two people killed in drone strikes on several residential buildings in the capital, which was under an air-raid siren for 11 hours, Kyiv’s city office said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X that a total of four people had been killed across all of Ukraine Sunday and 44 had been injured.
Moscow’s forces launched a total of 810 drones, four ballistic missiles and nine cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said. While most were shot down by air defenses, 54 drones and nine missiles hit targets across Ukraine, the air force said.
That surpasses the size of a July attack by Moscow that was previously the largest of the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. It also comes after recent attempts by Kyiv’s Western allies to broker a peace deal.
Zelensky described the latest attack as “vile,” saying “such killings now, when real diplomacy could have started a long time ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war.”
“The world can make the Kremlin’s criminals stop killing, all we need is political will,” Zelensky said.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said any Western troops in Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets for defeat,” a day after it was announced that dozens of Western countries have pledged to contribute to a potential peacekeeping force there if a ceasefire deal is agreed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a plenary session of the 2025 Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) at the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island in Vladivostok, Russia on September 5, 2025.
Putin says Western troops would be ‘legitimate targets’ if they are in Ukraine
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko called it a “massive attack,” saying the cities of Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, and Odesa all came under fire, as well as Kyiv.
In the capital, the building that houses the prime minister’s office, as well as some government ministries, was struck in the assault, she said.
