![Apartment building in Kyiv (Sviatoshyn District) after strike by cruise missile Iskander during Russian attack on the city in the night and morning of 31 July 2025. 31 people were killed and more than 159 injured (an article). The death toll later did rise to 32.[1]](https://freenewspress.com/media/2026/07/06/kyiv-apartment-missile-strike-c49844.jpg)
None of the 23 ballistic missiles Russia fired at Kyiv on Sunday night were shot down. The Ukrainian Air Force said a "serious shortage" of interceptor missiles left the capital defenseless against the ballistic strike. At least 15 people were killed in the city, and six more died in the wider Kyiv region.
The attack was part of what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as a "massive Russian attack" consisting of 68 missiles and 351 strike drones. The air force shot down or suppressed 37 missiles and 326 drones, but the ballistic missiles got through entirely.
Three large apartment blocks in Kyiv partially collapsed. Rescue teams worked through the ruins using sniffer dogs, while cranes lifted giant concrete slabs from collapsed flats. Helicopters carried water from the river to douse fires still burning across the city.
At one strike site in the Podilskyi district, a rescue team picked through an apartment block with a large hole blown through its middle. A woman sitting on a bench nearby was too distraught to speak. Workers helping her said two of her relatives were buried in the rubble.
Residents who lost their homes lined up to register their losses with police. One woman whose eighth-floor flat was destroyed began to speak, then turned away sobbing. A resident named Olena described the moment the missiles hit.
"After the first blast, nearby, the glass shattered and hit us, almost on our heads. Then everything was shaking," she said. She admitted she had not gone to the bomb shelter when sirens sounded because she was exhausted and wanted to sleep before work. "I feel like I have calmed down, but I am still trembling all over."
Zelensky appealed to allies to make "strong decisions" at this week's NATO summit on air defense supplies. He warned that Russia would keep hitting residential buildings as long as defensive Patriot missiles "remain in our allies' stockpiles." It was the second large-scale Russian attack on Kyiv in a single week. Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported 56 people injured in the capital, including seven children.
The NATO summit is expected to be a key moment for Ukraine to press allied governments for additional air defense systems.
