KYIV -- Russia launched a major missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv and the surrounding region early on July 6, blasting residential buildings and killing at least 15 people, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of an impending Russian strike.
Multiple loud explosions and air raid sirens were heard in the early morning hours in the capital, witnesses said, with cities throughout the country also reporting alerts against incoming projectiles.
"The enemy is hitting with ballistic missiles," Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration, wrote on Telegram. "Please stay in shelters."
"These are residential buildings. Places where people slept, lived their normal lives," he added.
As of shortly after noon local time, the death toll in and around Kyiv has risen to 15, with more than 60 people injured, according to Ukrainian officials.
A Kyiv resident whose mother was injured when a residential building was hit during the attack told RFE/RL it was the second time the building had been struck in a month.
"We had just gotten the windows replaced, and now it's happened again," she said.
"This is just horrible. There are so many children here," she told RFE/RL outside the damaged building while rescuers helped people out of the rubble.
"There was an explosion, and we were in the apartment hiding in a storage room. After the blast, there was heavy smoke, and we slowly made our way down the stairs," Tetyana, a woman who survived the attack, told Current Time.
"We were coming down almost blindly. When we got outside, there was a second explosion; we ended up lying under a car, and then somehow ran to a shelter," she added, hugging her cat, which rescuers had brought down from the ninth floor.
"It's very hard. I have no words. I've been left without a home," 21-year-old Oleksandra, who also lives on the ninth floor of a building that was hit, told Current Time.
At the moment of the explosion, she was with her mother and her cats, she said, adding that they had also survived the attack.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko visited the site of a damaged residential building on the morning of July 6.
"We do not rule out that there may still be people under the rubble." he told Current Time, adding that "unfortunately, we can say that children are among the dead."
"Another genocide by Russia -- there is no other way to describe it, when homes -- peaceful homes -- are destroyed and civilians are killed," he said.
Moscow launched 68 missiles and 351 drones at Ukraine overnight, including hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles, Ukraine's Air Force said on July 6.
Zelenskyy condemned the attack, calling on partners in Europe and the United States to boost their support for Ukraine's air defenses against Russian ballistic missiles.
"It is critically important that the world -- first and foremost the United States and our European partners -- come out of the NATO Summit in Ankara with strong decisions in support of our air defense, and thus the protection of ordinary people's lives," he wrote in a post on X.
"As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies' stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep 'vanquishing' residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror," he added.
The attack comes two days after US President Donald Trump held separate phone conversations with Zelenskyy and Russia's Vladimir Putin, pressing Washington’s effort to position itself as the key mediator in a conflict.
The strikes also come just ahead of a NATO summit set for Ankara, where Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with Trump on the sidelines of the event as he seeks to keep the US engaged in supporting his country in its battle against Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022.
Russia's military said on July 6 that the assault was in response to "terrorist attacks" against Russian "civilian infrastructure."
Zelenskyy Warns Of Attack
On July 5, Zelenskyy warned that Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russia was preparing a new massive strike.
"This is typical of Putin: Right after America's Independence Day and before the NATO Summit in Ankara. Russia wants to bring more evil and kill people," Zelenskyy wrote in a Facebook post.
"Any delay with missiles for our air defense -- missiles for Patriots [air defense systems] -- means the loss of lives, and it encourages Russia to continue the war," he wrote.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram that a residential building had been struck in the city's Podil district.
"People are trapped on the seventh to ninth floors," he wrote, adding that debris had fallen on a second residential building in the same area.
Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas in recent weeks as the peace process has stalled, with special emphasis on the capital.
Ukrainian officials said at least 30 people were killed and scores of others wounded in the large-scale attack on Kyiv on July 2, which caused fires and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings across several districts.
The scale of that assault drew swift condemnation from lawmakers in Washington.
Republican Joe Wilson of South Carolina, a longtime backer of US support for Ukraine, called the strikes further proof that the Kremlin is faltering militarily.
"This horrible war crime is yet more evidence that Russia is badly losing its war," Wilson told RFE/RL. "The USA and its allies should do even more of what it's doing. The strategy is working. Russia is losing."
Russia denies that it targets civilian areas despite widespread evidence of such attacks.
For its part, Ukraine continued its widening drone campaign overnight, launching more than 500 drones at targets inside Russia, including the Moscow and Leningrad regions.
Sevastopol Blackout
Meanwhile, Sevastopol, a city of some 500,000 people in Crimea -- Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014 -- was left without electricity on July 6 after a Ukrainian attack on energy infrastructure, occupation authorities said.
"As a result of an enemy attack on energy infrastructure outside Sevastopol, our city was temporarily left without power supply," Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed head of the local administration, wrote on Telegram.
A drone campaign by Ukraine has led to rolling blackouts and widespread fuel shortages as well as soaring black market prices on the peninsula. Kyiv has launched an effort to isolate Crimea, targeting fuel trucks, bridges, and other infrastructure sites, in an effort to reverse the illegal annexation.
Russia-installed authorities in Crimea have suspended fuel sales to private individuals and businesses amid a severe fuel shortage, and residents are reporting empty shelves in grocery stores and purchase limits on a number of basic goods.
