Night strike on the capital
Russia launched more than 100 attack drones toward Ukraine overnight into Sunday, striking Kyiv and other regions in one of the biggest aerial barrages this month. Ukrainian officials said most drones were shot down, but several still reached residential areas in the capital’s Desnianskyi district. At least three civilians were killed in their apartments, including a 19-year-old woman and her mother. Twenty-nine people were wounded, among them seven children, after fire and debris tore through multi-story housing blocks. Emergency crews evacuated families from damaged towers as flames burned on upper floors. Kyiv’s interior ministry said the scale of the strike — coming less than 24 hours after a separate wave of missiles and drones killed four more people — shows Moscow is trying to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses ahead of winter.

Pressure on air defense and Western support
Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted about 90 of the 101 drones launched, many of them Iranian-designed Shahed types that explode on impact. The drones that got through hit four sites in Kyiv and set off fires at five more locations where falling debris landed. President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed public appeals for faster deliveries of modern air-defense systems, arguing that Russia is deliberately targeting apartment blocks and power infrastructure to break civilian morale before the cold season. He also warned allies that delays in resupply widen gaps Russia can exploit “night after night.” The back-to-back strikes underline how the battlefield has shifted. Moscow is leaning on long-range drone saturation instead of costly ground pushes. Ukrainian commanders say that forces are still holding defensive lines, but admit that constant attacks on cities force them to redirect scarce air-defense units away from the front. Kyiv officials described Sunday’s strike as both a military tactic and psychological warfare, meant to signal that nowhere in Ukraine is fully safe.