At Least 22 Killed in Kyiv as Zelenskyy Warns

of 'Massive Russian Strike'

Report By Y-Trendz

Kyiv, July 3, 2026 — At least 22 people were killed and scores more wounded after Russia launched one of the largest bombardments of the war on Ukraine's capital overnight into Thursday, hours after

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians of an imminent "massive" attack and urged citizens to take shelter.

The Kyiv city military administration said the death toll had climbed to 22 by early Thursday evening, while more than 90 others were reported injured. Zelenskyy said his forces would "definitely" retaliate for what he described as an overnight pummelling of the city, and Ukrainian officials called it one of the deadliest single strikes on the capital since the war began.

An Attack Foretold

The strikes came just hours after Zelenskyy cut short a visit to Ireland, warning of an impending massive Russian strike and telling citizens to be "especially careful." Speaking at a joint news conference in Dublin with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, he said: "Today, we have information about another massive Russian strike; we have relevant intelligence data." He added that Ukraine had intelligence Russian President Vladimir Putin had "been preparing a massive strike against Ukraine for some time. That is exactly the threat we are facing tonight." He also accused Moscow of "completely refusing to end the war" despite Ukrainian efforts to signal openness to talks through official and unofficial channels.

Residents in the capital had reason to take the warning seriously — Russia had reportedly cautioned foreign diplomats about the possibility of a major aerial attack in the preceding days.

Scale of the Assault

According to Ukraine's air force, Russia fired 74 missiles and 496 drones at the capital in an assault lasting roughly 11 hours. Explosions shook the city for hours as tens of thousands of residents fled to bomb shelters and metro stations — the Kyiv Metro reported more than 50,000 people, including thousands of children, sheltering underground overnight. Loud booms echoed across the city, and huge columns of black smoke rose over the skyline as air-defence tracers streaked through the night.

Damage was recorded at roughly 30 to 130 locations across the city, depending on the count cited by different officials, with most of it concentrated on ordinary residential buildings. Zelenskyy said the sites hit included an ambulance station, a scientific research institute, a hotel, and various businesses. He wrote on social media that a missile had destroyed 64 apartments in a single nine-storey residential building, sharing footage showing a gaping hole across six floors of the partially collapsed structure. In the city's Darnytskyi district, six levels of another nine-storey building collapsed entirely, while in the Desnianskyi district people were reported trapped inside a damaged residential block. Roughly 800,000 books were destroyed in the inventory warehouse of Ukrainian publishing house BookChef, according to the Kyiv Independent, and Ukraine's private energy company DTEK reported damage to its energy infrastructure.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a day of mourning for the city on Friday, saying damage had been recorded across the entire capital, home to roughly three million people before the war.

Moscow's Justification

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Telegram that it had carried out a "massive attack" on Kyiv and other locations using long-range, high-precision air-, land- and sea-launched weapons and drones, describing the strikes as retaliation for recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Ukraine has intensified a campaign of long-range strikes deep into Russian territory in recent months — described by Zelenskyy as a "40-day blitz" — primarily targeting oil refineries and triggering a fuel crisis serious enough to force Russia, the world's third-largest oil producer, to begin importing gasoline from as far away as India.

Kyiv confirmed it had struck an oil refinery overnight in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, where local officials reported one person killed in a strike on an industrial facility, along with a railway bridge in Russian-occupied Luhansk that Ukraine's General Staff said was used to transport Russian personnel and military supplies. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian military commanders had briefed Putin on the strikes and that Moscow would "continue to increase pressure on the Kyiv regime" to achieve its objectives.

International Reaction

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it a "night of horror" in the capital and urged allies to strengthen Ukraine's air defences, while Zelenskyy renewed his request to Washington for a license to produce Patriot missile systems domestically, calling additional air-defence supplies "an absolute necessity." He acknowledged political headwinds in Washington and across Europe but appealed directly for prioritising the saving of Ukrainian lives.

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she would propose sanctioning more entities tied to Russia's military-industrial complex in response to the strikes, adding: "The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed." U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, including those pursued by the Trump administration, have so far failed to produce a breakthrough, with the two sides remaining far apart on core terms even as both Zelenskyy and Trump are expected to attend an upcoming NATO summit in Turkey.

This is a developing story; casualty figures may be revised as search-and-rescue operations continue.