Europe Warns, Putin Bombs: Kyiv Faces Longest, Deadliest Air Raid Yet.
Moscow unleashes 810 drones and missiles, killing civilians and striking Ukraine’s seat of power for the first time. Europe warns, but Putin shows he fears no diplomacy.
Russia launched its biggest air attack of the war, striking a Kyiv government building and killing civilians, including an infant. A deadly escalation that mocks peace talks and deepens Europe’s insecurity.
Russia has crossed another line. In its largest aerial assault since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, Moscow unleashed more than 810 drones and missiles overnight into Sunday, hammering Ukrainian cities and — for the first time — striking a government building in central Kyiv.
The attack killed at least four people, including an infant, and injured 44 more across Ukraine. Kyiv endured 11 hours under air-raid sirens as entire residential blocks shook, caught fire, or collapsed into rubble. The charred government building, housing the prime minister’s office and ministries, is a new symbol of escalation: the Kremlin is no longer limiting its message to frontlines. It is openly targeting the Ukrainian state itself.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strikes “vile,” accusing Russia of prolonging the war deliberately when diplomacy could have begun months ago. “The world can make the Kremlin’s criminals stop killing — all we need is political will,” he said.
The attack came days after Vladimir Putin warned that any Western troops deployed to Ukraine would be “legitimate targets.” That threat now hangs heavily over European capitals. France’s Emmanuel Macron condemned Russia for sinking “ever deeper into the logic of war and terror,” while EU chief Ursula von der Leyen accused the Kremlin of “mocking diplomacy and trampling international law.”
But words, again, are not stopping Putin. Drone wreckage lit up apartment fires in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district, where rescuers pulled the infant’s body from rubble. A bridge across the Dnipro in Kremenchuk was blasted — a rare strike far from the frontlines, cutting vital east-west supply routes.
For residents, it was the most terrifying night of the war. “We don’t feel anything anymore, except anger,” said Yulia, a Kyiv survivor. Another, Olha Biliashova, admitted: “In all four years of war, this was the first time it was extremely scary.”
Putin’s timing is calculated. The Paris summit of the “Coalition of the Willing” collapsed into chaos, Trump berated Europe for buying Russian oil, and NATO’s unity looks brittle. Moscow is exploiting every hesitation.
The world is watching Kyiv burn. The question is whether Europe and Washington will keep up their warnings, or finally accept that Russia’s war machine only respects hard power.
