Russia launches major aerial attack on Kyiv, injuring 15 civilians

The Russian armed forces injured at least 15 people in a major Russian missile and drone attack on the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, on May 24, 2025, BBC News reports and Ukrainian authorities.

Russia launched 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles against Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said, causing fires in residential buildings.

It was one of the largest combined aerial assaults on the city since the onset of the full-scale war of the Russians against the Ukrainian people.

The air force said it had downed six missiles and 245 drones.

“With each such attack, the world becomes more certain that the cause of prolonging the war lies in Moscow,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.

The barrage came as Russia and Ukraine are taking part in prisoner swaps agreed after talks between the two countries’ officials in Turkey.

Describing a “difficult night”, Zelensky said there had been fires and explosions across Kyiv with homes, businesses and cars damaged by strikes or falling debris.

Olha Chyrukha, a 64-year-old local resident who lives just outside central Kyiv, told Reuters news agency: “I wish they’d agree to a ceasefire. To bomb people like this – poor children. My three-year-old granddaughter was screaming, scared“.

Commenting on the combined use of aerial weapons, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said: “The enemy is improving its own tactics of using drones, while simultaneously striking with ballistics“.

Zelensky said only “additional sanctions targeting key sectors of the Russian economy” could push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.

Last week, Russia said Ukraine had launched hundreds of exploding drones at the country, including strikes over Moscow. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that 485 drones had been shot down.

Earlier this week, Trump had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war, after which he said the Kremlin and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations for a ceasefire.

However, Putin has only said Russia would work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum on a possible future peace agreement”, and failed to address calls for a 30-day ceasefire.

Zelenskyy called Russia’s week-long effort to draft a so-called “ceasefire memorandum” a mockery of the entire world.

He put an emphasis on an unconditional ceasefire.

“A new and effective security architecture is needed. We are uniting our partners for this. We are uniting our partners for this. It is definitely time to put more pressure on Russia so that the outcome is not just one result, but everything that is required. And when the Russians have already spent a week formulating a so-called ‘memorandum’, which they want to present as a response to the demand for a ceasefire, that is clearly a mockery of the entire world. Of course, Russia feels no need to conserve its forces. We need new sanctions against Russia,” the president of Ukraine said.

Previously, Bohdan Bernatskyy, a member of the Sanctions Policy Working Group of the Crimean Platform Expert Network, revealed at the Third Parliamentary Summit in Latvia that over 1,300 Russian military companies and 2 million industrial workers continue to operate, many without international restrictions.