Russia Pounds Ukraine With Missiles, Drones in ‘Massive’ Attack: Russian Defense Ministry

Russian forces struck multiple targets across Ukraine on Sept. 7, killing at least four people and setting a government building ablaze in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have said.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian drones and missiles struck multiple targets in the country’s Sumy and Chernihiv regions, and in the cities of Odesa, Kryvyi Rih, and Zaporizhzhia.

“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, calling on Kyiv’s Western allies to help bolster his country’s air-defense capabilities.

Keith Kellogg, Washington’s envoy to Ukraine, said the extensive Russian attack appeared to be an escalation of the years-long conflict.

“The attack was not a signal that Russia wants to diplomatically end this war,” Kellogg wrote on X.

Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, said it was the first time that a major government building in Kyiv had been targeted since Russia launched its initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in early 2022.

According to the Ukrainian air force, the wide-ranging aerial attack involved 13 missiles and more than 800 drones, making it the largest single Russian drone barrage since the conflict began more than three years ago.

Ukrainian air defenses successfully downed four missiles and approximately 750 drones, the air force said.

Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said two people were killed—including a young child—in the capital’s Darnytskyi district, which sits to the east of the Dnipro River.

In Kyiv’s western Sviatoshynskyi district, a nine-story apartment building suffered extensive damage, while falling drone debris set three other buildings alight elsewhere in the city, local officials said.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said the hours-long Russian attack had left more than 20 people injured across the capital.

Russia’s defense ministry later confirmed that its forces had carried out a “massive strike” with “precision weapons” and drones on what it claimed were Ukrainian military-industrial facilities.

In a statement carried by Russia’s TASS news agency, it listed the attack’s designated targets as “Ukrainian drone production, assembly, repairs, storage, and launch sites.”

The ministry also claimed its forces had struck “air bases in the central, southern, and eastern parts of Ukraine, including the Kyiv-67 industrial facility in Kyiv’s western suburb and the STS-Group logistics base in Kyiv’s southern suburb.”

“All the designated facilities were wiped out,” it said, going on to assert that “no other facilities in Kyiv were targeted.”

Infrastructure in Crosshairs

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure sites, typically using missiles and drones.

Kyiv has responded with near-daily drone attacks on targets in western Russia, especially energy sites, and in four regions—including Zaporizhzhia—that Moscow claims to have annexed in late 2022.

Both sides say they are using precision weapons against exclusively military targets with a view to avoiding civilian casualties.

On Sept. 8, Russian-installed authorities in Zaporizhzhia claimed that Ukrainian forces had carried out a large-scale drone attack on the region’s Energodar nuclear power plant, which Russian forces took over shortly after the 2022 invasion.

“Today, the enemy launched numerous UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] at Energodar,” Maxim Pukhov, the area’s Moscow-installed mayor, said in remarks cited by TASS.

“The attack is ongoing. It is unsafe to be in open areas.”

A day earlier, Kyiv said that its military had attacked a key oil pipeline in Russia’s western Bryansk region, causing “comprehensive” damage.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify claims made by either side of the conflict.

Reuters contributed to this report.