Russian strikes kill five nationwide, two in Kyiv, as smog blankets capital

Russian forces struck Kyiv again overnight into Wednesday, setting fire to a house in the Solomianskyi district and injuring one person, Censor.net and Hromadske reported, a day after a much larger Russian assault on the country's energy grid killed five people nationwide, including one child, and injured 14, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

A Russian drone struck a school building in the Solomianskyi district on Thursday morning, during a fresh air-raid alert, setting it alight while children sheltered inside; no injuries were reported there, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. A separate warehouse fire broke out in the Obolonskyi district, injuring one man, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said. Drone debris also fell in an open area of the Pecherskyi district, the city's military administration said, with no injuries reported.

A rescue worker was also injured in a second Russian strike on Kyiv's Vyhivskyi district during the earlier barrage, Ukraine's Ukrinform news agency reported. Ukrinform named the rescue worker as Volodymyr Skovorodka, who holds a Ukrainian athletics record, but gave no details of his condition.

In Kyiv itself, two people were killed in that earlier attack, including an employee at a warehouse that was hit, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Officials gave differing injury figures for the capital, ranging from four to seven.

Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi said the combined strike was the largest of its kind since the end of the last heating season, and that Russian forces have barely let a day pass without an attack on energy infrastructure since the summer. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 254 of 285 Russian drones launched overnight, 174 of them high-flying, jet-propelled models that are harder to shoot down; Russian forces also launched a ballistic missile attack.

The attack left thick smog over Kyiv, made up of smoke and soot from the strikes, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said. Residents of the Podilskyi, Lukianivskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts, as well as the Borshchahivka area, were told to keep windows and vents shut. Internet connectivity was disrupted in Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions after emergency power shutdowns, monitoring group NetBlocks said.

Russia's defence ministry said its forces had struck power facilities supplying Kyiv's military-industrial sites, a hydroelectric plant, a thermal power plant and a communications hub in the capital, along with port infrastructure in Izmail; Ukrainian officials did not confirm these specific targets. Ukraine's main electricity provider, DTEK, confirmed its network had been damaged, and said supply was restored to 8,000 households by Wednesday morning.

Russian forces also struck the northern Zhytomyr region overnight, hitting energy facilities and other civilian infrastructure, regional governor Vitaliy Bunechko said, while Zelensky said critical infrastructure was also hit in the Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad and Rivne regions. In Poland, the airports of Lublin and Rzeszów briefly suspended flights and Polish armed forces put air defence systems on alert as a precaution; Romania also scrambled fighter jets. Moldova's foreign minister, Mihai Popsoi, said his country "strongly condemned" a violation of its airspace after a drone crossed the border and exploded near the village of Hirbovet, in Anenii Noi district, linking the incident to Russia's wider overnight assault on Ukraine.