16 dead in Kyiv, including 6-year-old, after overnight Russian strikes
Kyiv officials said at least 12 children were injured in the capital by the strikes, the highest number in any night since the Russian invasion began in 2022.
Women react outside a destroyed apartment building after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
Updated EDT today [7/31] at 12:49 p.m. EDT]; article contains illustrations in locations on this page different from those in the original text; not all the original articles' illustrations are included below due to technical/computer reasons.
KYIV — Russian forces launched drones and missiles across the Ukrainian capital overnight, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 150 others, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a 6-year-old boy was among those killed in the strikes, which he said also injured at least 12 children. Earlier Thursday, Klitschko said the strikes had injured the highest number of children in Kyiv in one night since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The overnight barrage struck Kyiv during a period of political uncertainty, as Ukraine’s parliament acted to restore the independence of the country’s two main government anti-corruption bodies — a move demanded by Kyiv’s international partners as well as tens of thousands of enraged Ukrainian protesters.
Among the attacks was a rocket strike that destroyed the entrance of a nine-story building in the Sviatoshynskyi district, in the city’s west, Timur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, said in a post on Telegram.
In total, Russian forces fired over 300 drones and eight cruise missiles overnight toward Ukrainian targets, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said the brunt of the attack was directed at Kyiv. Ukraine’s military said five of the missiles and 21 of the drones struck targets.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday that it targeted Ukrainian military sites with long-range precision weapons and attack drones overnight.
Kyiv sustained some of the heaviest damage. Zelensky said on Telegram that Russian forces also targeted the Dnipro and Poltava regions in central Ukraine, the northeastern Sumy region, and the Mykolaiv region in the country’s south.
Among the attacks was a rocket strike that destroyed the entrance of a nine-story building in the Sviatoshynskyi district, in the city’s west, Timur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, said in a post on Telegram.
In total, Russian forces fired over 300 drones and eight cruise missiles overnight toward Ukrainian targets, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said the brunt of the attack was directed at Kyiv. Ukraine’s military said five of the missiles and 21 of the drones struck targets.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday that it targeted Ukrainian military sites with long-range precision weapons and attack drones overnight.
Kyiv sustained some of the heaviest damage. Zelensky said on Telegram that Russian forces also targeted the Dnipro and Poltava regions in central Ukraine, the northeastern Sumy region, and the Mykolaiv region in the country’s south.
“Today the world once again saw Russia’s response to our desire with America and Europe for peace,” Zelensky said.
On Thursday morning, firefighters and rescue workers were clearing the debris of a building that was partially destroyed in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district. Residents from the building and neighborhood stood behind a police line, watching the work with stunned expressions. At that site alone, four people were confirmed killed, but that number would probably rise as 10 people were still unaccounted for, Kyiv municipal police spokeswoman Anna Strashok said in an interview.
Many residents spent the first part of the night in bomb shelters, while Kyiv was being bombarded with waves of self-destructing drones, said Yevheny Uhlov, 33, a physical therapist who lives in a building next to the one that was destroyed. After the official all-clear signal from this attack was given shortly after 3 a.m., he and his wife returned to their apartment, he said in an interview nearby the site of the attack.
Roughly an hour later, another air raid alert sounded out — this time for incoming missiles. An explosion rang out a few minutes later. “We heard a very strong explosion and glass shattering,” he said. “We ran out onto the street and saw the building collapsed with smoke coming from it.”
Kateryna Naralnik, 66, a pensioner, lived in the section of the building that was destroyed. She and her son Yevheny were sleeping in a part of their apartment that did not collapse and survived the attack, she said.
However, her other son Oleksandr, 40, daughter Natalia, 45, and Natalia’s two children, Vlad and Roman, 22 and 17, were in a portion that was now buried under the rubble. “It all came down on them,” she said, as she stood to the side and watched the rescue workers clear the rubble.
“We are innocent — my grandchildren were young and innocent,” she said.
Kateryna Naralnik, 66, a pensioner, lived in the section of the building that was destroyed. She and her son Yevheny were sleeping in a part of their apartment that did not collapse and survived the attack, she said.
However, her other son Oleksandr, 40, daughter Natalia, 45, and Natalia’s two children, Vlad and Roman, 22 and 17, were in a portion that was now buried under the rubble. “It all came down on them,” she said, as she stood to the side and watched the rescue workers clear the rubble.
An injured resident stands outside his house, damaged during Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine
“We are innocent — my grandchildren were young and innocent,” she said.
In a separate statement Thursday, the Russian defense ministry said its forces captured Chasiv Yar, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a claim that was disputed by Ukrainian officials. Located west of Bakhmut, the town for the past year has been a focus for Moscow’s forces amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region, which he has already declared, illegally, to be annexed by Russia.
Kyiv has denied any change in which side controls the town, which it says is divided. “The situation in Chasiv Yar is the same as in recent months,” Viktor Tregubov, a Ukrainian military spokesman, told RBC-Ukraine. The Washington Post could not independently verify either side’s claim about the town’s status.
After Trump on Monday tightened the deadline for Russia to reach agreement on a ceasefire with Ukraine from 50 days to 10 days, Russian officials and state television propagandists sharpened their criticism of the United States and Trump.
The harsher tone suggests that as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin presses ahead with the war against Ukraine in defiance of pressure from Trump, the Kremlin may be abandoning any reset in relations with Washington under Trump’s administration.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and prime minister who is now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, engaged in a to-and-fro spat with Trump on social media, declaring on Monday that each new ultimatum from Trump was “a threat and a step towards war” between the U.S. and Russia.
Trump on Thursday warned Medvedev, whom he called “the failed former President of Russia,” to “watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”
Medvedev responded on Thursday with an emoji of laughter through tears and a nuclear threat against the United States, a common theme in his reliably hawkish remarks. Trump’s “nervous” threats, Medvedev posted on Telegram, just proved that “Russia is right in everything and will continue to go its own way.”
Medvedev reminded Trump about the dangers of the “dead hand,” a reference to an automated Soviet system designed to launch nuclear weapons in the event of the destruction of its leadership.
Meanwhile, another senior security official close to Putin, Kremlin aide Nikolai Patrushev, rattled sabers over the presence of U.S. planes and ships in the Arctic region and Barents Sea, warning that this could lead to “an uncontrollable escalation of tension,” and accusing the U.S. Navy of “provocative operations.”
Russian military and security officials see the Arctic region as a key arena for confrontation with the West, as Russia seeks to develop the Arctic shipping route, known as the Northern Sea Route, along its northern coast.
“The growing military activities of the U.S. and NATO in the Arctic increase the likelihood of incidents, which might lead to an uncontrollable escalation of tension,” Patrushev said. “The West is advancing the idea that Russia has no special rights to the Northern Sea Route,” he said.
Last December Admiral Alexander Moiseyev, commander in chief of the Russian Navy warned of the dangers of Western naval activity in the Arctic.
“The Arctic is one of the key regions where the confrontation of the world’s leading states is unfolding,” he said.
Ho reported from London, Dixon from Riga, Latvia, and Francis from Brussels.
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