Russia Fires 598 Drones and 31 Missiles at Ukraine, Killing at Least 25 in Kyiv

Russia launched 598 drones, including Shahed-type attack drones and decoys, and 31 missiles at Ukraine overnight into Friday, according to Ukraine's air force. The missile package included two Kh-47 Kinzhal and nine Iskander-M or North Korean-built KN-23 ballistic missiles, plus 20 Kh-101 cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defenses reported downing 563 drones and 26 missiles, an interception rate above 90 percent for drones. The weapons that reached Kyiv were enough to destroy a five-story apartment building in a direct hit.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that the death toll had risen to 25, among them four children and a two-year-old girl killed with her mother. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko put the number of injured at 63, including 11 children. Zelensky called it "an absolutely despicable attack that demonstrates Putin's true intentions, to continue killing rather than take steps towards peace." The barrage did not stop with daylight. Russian drones struck the Kyiv region again through Friday, damaging 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration. Ukraine's foreign ministry said air raid alerts kept the capital under lockdown for about 15 hours on Thursday.

Russia's defense ministry described the operation differently. It said its forces used ground- and sea-launched precision weapons and long-range drones against Ukrainian defense industry sites, naming a logistics center at Vyshneve outside Kyiv that it said assembles and distributes components for long-range strike drones, along with two cargo ships south of Odesa that it said were carrying military supplies. Moscow has consistently denied targeting civilians. Neither claim about the Vyshneve site nor the residential destruction in Kyiv can be independently reconciled from open sources, and the two accounts have not converged in any of this month's strikes.

The attack came one day after Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe met Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, in Moscow. Naryshkin described the meeting as a routine working exchange, and the Kremlin had earlier denied that formal talks with United States envoys were scheduled. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he had held "good talks" with President Vladimir Putin and that Russia is "not going to attack" North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) territory.

Friday's toll exceeds the 17 deaths reported after the August 20 strike on Kyiv, when debris also fell on Romanian and Moldovan territory. Al Jazeera reported that a wave of attacks earlier this month killed at least 17 people and exploited Ukraine's shortage of missile interceptors. Ukraine has answered with its own long-range campaign, including drone attacks that killed three people in Russia on August 26.