Kyiv Hit Hard as Drones Strike Residential Buildings
In the capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that four people lost their lives, including the child, with 45 residents injured across the city. Emergency services later revised the Kyiv death toll upward to five. The attacks came in more than one wave, with a drone flying at an unusually low altitude before slamming directly into an 18-storey residential building in one of the strikes early Thursday morning.

The scale of destruction across the capital was striking. Missile debris tore into the sixth floor of an apartment block in the central Podil district. A large fire consumed a building in the city's northern area, and debris came down across several locations throughout Kyiv. Four emergency medical workers were among those hurt while responding to the attacks. In one harrowing moment, rescue teams managed to pull a mother and her child out of a badly damaged building in a central district, where the ground floor had taken a direct hit. Images shared online showed thick smoke rising above the skyline and fires burning with little sign of being brought under control.

Odesa and Dnipro Bear Heavy Casualties
Further south, Odesa endured some of the worst of the night's violence. Seven people were killed and 11 others injured after the city was struck by several consecutive waves of missile and drone attacks. Infrastructure facilities and at least one residential building sustained serious damage, according to local military officials.

In Dnipro, in the country's southeast, a Russian strike on residential buildings left two people dead and 27 injured. Regional Governor Oleksandr Ganzha shared photographs showing apartment blocks engulfed in flames — a grim visual record of what another night of bombardment looks like for ordinary Ukrainian families.

Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, was also targeted. Two people were reported injured there following drone strikes, adding to the growing toll from a night that stretched across much of the country.