Russia has unleashed its largest ballistic missile assault on Ukraine in months, killing at least 20 people and wounding 140 others over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said. The capital Kyiv bore the brunt of the onslaught, hit by about 40 Iskander-M and hypersonic Zircon missiles in less than an hour shortly after 1.30am on Sunday.
Residents in the historic centre felt their houses shake and heard car alarms blare as dozens of missiles arrived. A three-storey building caught fire in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, where rescuers dug through rubble to recover a body. Four other areas were hit, with fires reported at offices, residential buildings and a dormitory. The ceiling of the ground-floor vestibule at Lukianivska metro station collapsed because of the blast wave, forcing its closure.
“Russia's biggest ballistic missile attack kills 20, injures 140 across Ukraine, including Kyiv and Kharkiv.”
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said both residential and non-residential buildings were damaged, including a supermarket. The city's military administration reported one person killed and seven wounded in the capital. Across Ukraine, the strikes were relentless: a postal terminal in Kharkiv’s suburbs was attacked, killing four men aged 24 to 62. An elderly woman died in Kyiv, and there were fatalities in Zaporizhzhia and Sumy.
“It was one of the most massive ballistic attacks,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said, noting that over the past week Russia had used about 1,450 strike drones, more than 1,640 guided bombs and 99 missiles against Ukraine.
The assault extended to the Black Sea, where Ukraine’s navy said a Turkish-owned civilian cargo ship, the Golden Leo, was struck by three Russian cruise missiles as it left port near Odesa carrying grain. Six sailors were confirmed dead, four are missing, and eight crew members were rescued, according to Kyiv’s transport minister, Mykola Kalashnyk. Foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said the crew included citizens of Syria and India, and that a Ukrainian maritime pilot was killed.
Ukraine hit back, striking three Russian oil tankers in the Black Sea and three oil depots in the southern Stavropol region. Zelensky described these as targets that “finance Russian aggression”. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which carries Kazakh oil to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, confirmed its terminal was hit, damaging two tankers and suspending oil loading. Stavropol’s governor said a drone attack caused a fire in an industrial park.
“Precise hits on three Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers were recorded,” Zelensky said. “I thank every unit that is helping to spread the realisation within Russia that this war must be brought to an end.”
The question now is whether Moscow, having exhausted its latest barrage, will pause – or prepare an even larger salvo.