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Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said some residents remained trapped under rubble after a nine-storey apartment building collapsed during the overnight assault. The mayor’s office added that the injury toll had risen to 11 from an initial count of six, with at least one person left in critical condition after an ambulance station was hit. Multiple fires broke out across several neighbourhoods that had been evacuated as a precaution, according to reporting by BBC News. Emergency crews continued rescue operations through the early morning hours.
The strikes featured explosions from a combination of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, with Ukrainian air defence systems engaging the incoming threats and sending tracer fire across the night sky. This assault represented the first major attack on the Ukrainian capital in more than two weeks. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had cut short an official visit to Dublin after receiving intelligence indicating that Moscow was preparing a large-scale strike on Kyiv, hours before the barrage began.
Polish authorities activated fighter jets as a preventative measure to protect their airspace in regions adjacent to Ukraine during the Russian operation. Poland’s military wrote on X, “These actions are of a preventive nature and are aimed at securing and protecting the airspace, especially in areas adjacent to the threatened regions.” The Polish armed forces stressed that no direct attack on their territory had occurred even as a Nato member taking precautionary steps.
According to data compiled from Ukrainian reports on Wikipedia, Russian forces carried out a missile and drone assault on Kyiv on May 14, 2026, that caused an apartment block to collapse and resulted in 24 deaths along with 57 injuries. A June 2, 2026, Russian attack across multiple Ukrainian cities including Kyiv killed at least 18 civilians and wounded more than 100 others, the Council on Foreign Relations Global Conflict Tracker reported. The Institute for the Study of War has documented how Moscow has repeatedly used combined drone and missile waves in 2026 to target Ukrainian urban centres and infrastructure.
Ukrainian officials have yet to release a complete breakdown of intercepted versus penetrating projectiles from the latest attack on the capital. Search and rescue teams from the state emergency service persisted with efforts to locate any additional victims amid the debris in affected districts. Damage assessments remained ongoing as authorities worked to restore services in impacted neighbourhoods.
The latest strikes fit within a broader pattern of Russian long-range attacks that have intensified at various points since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. CFR assessments have tracked how such operations often coincide with periods of heightened activity on the battlefield or in response to Ukrainian deep strikes inside Russia. No immediate statement from Russian officials was available detailing the objectives of the Kyiv operation.
