Russia hits Kyiv with record 1,567 drones and 56 missiles over 48 hours, killing 8 including a 12-year-old

Russia launched what Ukrainian officials say was the largest combined air attack of the war between the evening of May 13 and the morning of May 14, firing 1,567 drones and 56 missiles, according to a tally given by President Volodymyr Zelensky after a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said 675 drones and 56 missiles, including ballistic ones, were fired in the overnight wave alone between 18:00 on May 13 and 08:00 on May 14, damaging 11 residential buildings in Kyiv and more than 50 across the country.

The heaviest single strike landed in Kyiv's Darnytskyi district, where a missile collapsed a residential block from the first to the ninth floor. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko put the toll at eight dead, including a 12-year-old girl, and 44 injured; the State Emergency Service said about 20 people were still missing as rubble-clearance continued through the day. Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared May 15 a day of mourning, with flags at half-mast on municipal buildings and entertainment events banned across the capital.

The strikes hit far beyond Kyiv. Power outages were recorded in Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk and other oblasts after attacks on energy infrastructure; Kremenchuk was hit on its energy grid, and Chornomorsk took strikes on port and residential areas. Russia also struck Uzhhorod, on Ukraine's border with Hungary, for the first time since the 2022 invasion in a Wednesday daytime salvo — prompting Budapest to summon the Russian ambassador, also a first since the start of the full-scale war. Strikes were registered as far west as Rivne and Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kharkiv took further hits in the east.

Sybiha said Russian first-person-view drones twice attacked a clearly marked vehicle belonging to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Kherson region, hitting it in two different locations with a significant interval between the strikes; the OCHA team, including its in-country leadership delivering aid, was unhurt. "Humanitarian workers are not a target!" he wrote on X, framing the attack as deliberate and calling for a UN Security Council session. He also ordered Ukrainian embassies to lower their flags and open books of condolences, and said foreign ambassadors in Kyiv would be invited to one of the strike sites.

Zelensky said Ukraine's air defences intercepted 94 percent of the incoming drones and 73 percent of the missiles, leaving ballistic missiles as the central operational gap; Kyiv has long flagged a critical shortage of US Patriot interceptors. He instructed the Defence Forces and intelligence services to "propose possible formats for our response" and made anti-ballistic systems and missiles for them "priority number one", warning that the assessment of Ukrainian diplomacy in May and June would depend on supplies for the air shield. "This is a deliberate terrorist tactic," he said, arguing that Moscow had stockpiled drones and missiles to overwhelm Ukraine's defences with sustained continuous fire over almost two days.

The attack was politically timed. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, both attending events in Aachen for the Charlemagne Prize, called the assault "the largest in four years" and said it "lays bare all the hypocrisy" of Moscow's earlier May 9-11 ceasefire pledge. Merz also rebuffed a Kremlin proposal to engage the European Union only through pro-Kremlin former chancellor Gerhard Schröder: "We Europeans decide for ourselves who speaks for us, no one else does." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accused Moscow of indiscriminately targeting civilians. Sybiha said the strikes had been launched "right at the time when the leaders of the most powerful countries meet in Beijing" and called on Trump and Xi Jinping to "tell Putin to finally end the war".

The assault followed a barrage of more than 800 drones on the night of May 12-13 and repeated Russian violations of the US-brokered May 9-11 humanitarian ceasefire, during which Russia struck at least six Ukrainian oblasts. It also lands days after Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa's coalition collapsed over a Ukrainian drone incursion, prompting her resignation, and as the Kremlin continues to insist that any negotiation requires Kyiv to first withdraw from Donbas territory Russian forces have failed to seize on the battlefield.