Kyiv awoke to the smoke of a widespread Russian drone and missile attack on September 7, 2025, in the deadliest air raid since Moscow invaded in February 2022. Hundreds of drones and missiles targeted the capital overnight, Ukrainian officials said. Emergency sirens wailed across the city as residents took shelter and scores of Iranian-made Shahed drones and missiles streaked over Kyiv, while a Russian Iskander missile hit the Cabinet of Ministers building. 

By morning, after the worst attack on the capital yet, smoke billowed from neighborhoods, schools, government buildings, and a large fire at the Cabinet of Ministers — a major strike on the symbol of Ukrainian statehood. At least four civilians were killed nationwide, and dozens more were injured in the largest volume of drones and missiles sent against Kyiv to date.

Residents in the Darnytskyi and Sviatoshynskyi neighborhoods in Kyiv reported apartment buildings being damaged, with windows and parts of walls blown out as hundreds of drones and missiles were launched. By morning, rescue crews were evacuating some of the injured from apartment buildings.

Damage was reported in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said that Ukrainian air defenses, including those from Western-supplied systems, downed most of the drones. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its forces had fired 800 Shahed drones and 13 missiles. In recent weeks, Russia has continued to use Iranian-made Shahed drones to saturate Ukraine’s air defense systems, even as Kyiv has made significant advances against Russian troops in the south and east.

Emergency crews and firefighters battled to contain multiple fires in residential neighborhoods in Kyiv overnight as drones and missiles rained on the capital city. Footage on social media showed rows of drones streaking through the sky and over apartment buildings, where air raid sirens were blaring.

Moscow’s own Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces were not targeting Ukrainian civilians and that all targets were “legitimate military infrastructure.” Russia’s Defense Ministry had no immediate comment on the strike on the Cabinet of Ministers building.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a centerpiece of his presidency, he has faced multiple battlefield setbacks. The war has killed thousands of civilians in Ukraine and Russia, according to official figures. Kyiv, which is home to three million people, had previously been seen as a “safe city,” with few attacks on residential neighborhoods.

Ukrainian officials rejected Russian claims that missiles and drones were not intended to strike residential areas of the capital or the Cabinet of Ministers. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said that the Cabinet of Ministers complex was struck in the attack, and that it was “direct hit.”

Ukrainian authorities said that at least four civilians had been killed in the air raid and more than 40 were injured, including an infant in Kyiv. “Russian missiles and drones are again being used in terrorist attacks against Ukrainian civilians,” Zelenskyy’s office said. “The raid on Kyiv has once again claimed victims, including a child. The authorities of the Russian Federation are bloodied.”

Zelenskyy gave a nighttime address to the nation, saying the attack was “another wave of terror” and vowing that the invaders would not succeed in using the latest assault to cause Ukrainians to lose heart. “Terrorism is not war, it is not dialogue and it is not diplomacy. It is cheapness and impotence that are often paid for by oil and gas,” he said.

Zelenskyy has increasingly warned about a possible Russian assault on Kyiv, saying a renewed offensive would be a move to stabilize an invasion that has faced major reversals. Russia has also massed troops near Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson, which was seized in the early weeks of the war but was later retaken by Ukraine. Moscow has been reinforcing its troops in Ukraine ahead of a possible winter counteroffensive by Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s office said on September 4. Russian forces near Kherson are stepping up attacks on Ukrainian military positions and civilian areas across Ukraine’s south and east, officials in Kyiv said on September 6.

In a press briefing on September 7, the Ukraine Defense Ministry said: “The Ukrainian military defense command in line with the appropriate authorities continues to plan a complex of measures for the upcoming winter period in order to maintain the ability to perform the tasks assigned to them by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in the entire territory of Ukraine.”

Emergency services in Kyiv rushed to evacuate some of the injured out of apartment buildings after the air attack on the capital overnight.

Volunteers set up food and water distribution points by midday September 7 as the humanitarian and clean-up effort began in earnest. As people cleaned up streets in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine after the strikes, a symbol of defiance, the Ukrainian national anthem, emerged online. “They will not break us,” one popular post said, alongside footage of people singing the anthem amid the debris.

Information gathered from Reuters, AP News, Financial Times, Times of India, CNN