A Russian jet-powered drone set homes on fire in Kharkiv’s Osnovianskyi district during the night, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES) reported. A small child was among the people hurt. Around 13:00 on 28 October, another Russian drone hit the same district, starting a fire, killing one person and injuring two, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Of the 88 Shahed-type drones Russia launched from 18:00 on 27 October, 38 were jet-powered, the Air Force reported. By its preliminary count at 08:00, defenses had downed or jammed 31 of those 38. Several drones were still in the air. Russia also fired an Iskander-M or S-400 ballistic missile from Taganrog. Even so, Russian weapons hit eight locations, and debris fell on two more.

One strike, a casualty count that shifted

Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported a drone strike on the district at 22:42 on 27 October. At 23:12, he clarified that a child hurt in the strike had acute stress reaction. At 23:39, he listed four people hurt: women aged 32 and 65, a 56-year-old man, and a 4-year-old boy. Three went to hospital. Eight minutes later, he added that a 65-year-old woman had acute stress reaction. His morning summary of the day’s strikes lists two 65-year-old women in Kharkiv, one wounded and one with acute stress.

The SES put the number of people hurt at five, including the child. Rescuers said a jet-powered drone struck the area, starting a 2,500 m² fire.

Kharkiv’s last two days

The Osnovianskyi fire was part of a run of Russian strikes on Kharkiv and the area around it. On the evening of 26 October, Russian multiple rocket launchers hit the city’s Novobavarskyi district, killing two people and hurting four. That night, jet drones struck three places in Kharkiv district, which surrounds the city. One hit, in the settlement of Vilshany, left people hurt. The SES counted three injured that night.

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During the day on 27 October, another Russian jet drone hit a warehouse in the city’s Slobidskyi district. Preliminary reports showed no casualties. Drones also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district that afternoon, wounding one person, Terekhov said. Another hit damaged an administrative building in the Kholodnohirskyi district, he added. Hours later came the strike on Osnovianskyi. Across Kharkiv Oblast, 14 people were hurt over the past day, including a child, Syniehubov’s morning summary shows. In Osnovianskyi, rescuers were again working under the threat of repeat strikes.

Russian missiles and drones killed one person and injured 24 in Kyiv overnight on 22 October, the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office said. Damage spread across six of the city’s districts, the city military administration reported.

The strike came hours after Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin had told Witkoff that Russia was “in principle” ready to resume three-way talks with the US and Ukraine in mid-November. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy read the overnight attack as a sign that Russia’s attitude has not changed. A day earlier, Russian drones killed two people in a 24-story Kyiv apartment block.

21 ballistic missiles in three waves

Russia fired 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight, Zelenskyy said. The barrage came in three waves, around 22:00, at about 02:00, and around 03:30.

Across Ukraine, air defenses downed or suppressed 181 of 210 Russian drones, the Air Force said. Its report did not mention any ballistic missiles shot down.

One killed in the Dniprovskyi district

The only death in Kyiv came in the Dniprovskyi district, on the city’s left bank. There, Russian strikes destroyed 13 detached houses on several streets, prosecutors said. Police said the man killed was 48 and that six people were injured in the district, four of them children, the youngest aged five.

Of the injured, five are minors and two are young children, and prosecutors reported acute stress reactions among them. A 16-year-old boy is in hospital with a closed head injury, prosecutors said. Sixteen of the injured were hospitalized, the city military administration said. The final number of injured is still being established.

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Ambulance station and monastery damaged

In the Holosiivskyi, Obolonskyi, Pecherskyi, and Sviatoshynskyi districts, the attack damaged eight apartment buildings, prosecutors said. It also damaged a building-supply hypermarket, a restaurant, a monastery building, a post office, and office premises.

In Pecherskyi, Russia damaged an ambulance station and six ambulances, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote. The State Emergency Service said eight people were injured in that district, three of them children, and reported damaged transport infrastructure in the Darnytskyi district.

Bridge closed, metro line split

The strikes damaged metro infrastructure on the Pivdennyi (Southern) Bridge, Kyiv Metro said. As of the morning, green-line trains ran in two sections, Syrets–Vydubychi and Osokorky–Chervonyi Khutir. Inspections and repairs would continue after the all-clear, the metro said.

Oleksii Biloshytskyi, head of Ukraine’s Patrol Police Department, announced that traffic across the bridge toward the left bank was temporarily closed. The city is adding buses on routes 22 and 91, the city administration said. Russian drones had already hit the bridge repeatedly in early October.

Ukrainians can now check a free live map of where Russian attack targets are flying, a Ukrainian air-threat monitoring project called monitor announced on X on 13 October. The beta pulls public reports of drones in flight into a single view and lays them over official air raid alerts.

Russia now flies jet-powered drones, and some switch off their engines before an attack and glide in. Over a hundred drones can arrive in one night. Yet since September, drone-only yellow alerts in some Oblasts no longer shut everything down. So during drone alerts, some Ukrainians now stay at their desks rather than in shelters. The new maps offers them a quick look at the sky from a phone, even on a weak signal.

What the map shows

The launch post described the service as one that tries to show where each target is, using open sources and algorithmic processing. It said the beta focuses on drones, with other targets to follow.

The drone data does not come from radar. The service draws on regional Telegram channels that post where drones and missiles are flying over their own oblasts. It cross-checks those posts to estimate what each target is, roughly where it is, and where it is heading, the project explains. The same page already lists cruise and ballistic missiles among the targets. It also says the map is free, ad-free, and needs no registration, and that it runs in a browser or on Telegram, designed to work on a phone with a weak signal.

A target log lists each drone’s district and course. Alert data comes from alerts.in.ua, and areas under alert turn red or yellow. The map refreshes about every 20 seconds while targets are airborne.

However, the developers warn that the dots are only estimates and show up late. Some targets slip through untracked. That is why “an empty map does not mean you are safe,” they wrote. When sirens sound, they urge people to rely on official signals and take shelter.

On 17 October, the Defense Ministry said that Ukraine’s Air Alert app now maps the approximate position and heading of some targets. These include cruise missiles, Banderol drone-launched missiles, and Shahed-type drones. The data comes straight from the Air Force over secure channels.

For security reasons, it carries no exact coordinates or real-time tracking and may lag. Ballistic missiles and anything faster than 2,000 km/h don’t appear at all. The ministry’s advice matches monitor’s: get to a shelter first, then check the map from there.

A Russian attack on Sloviansk on 13 October wounded members of a Ukrainian Red Cross team, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society reported. The same day, a Russian bomb hit the city’s invincibility point, one of the state-run hubs where residents warm up and charge phones when power goes out.

Help is getting harder to reach in Sloviansk. Public transport stopped after a Russian strike on two buses in nearby Kramatorsk killed 30 people on 8 October. From 1 November, a curfew from 16:00 to 11:00 will cover nearly all of Donetsk Oblast’s free territory. The people providing help are hit too. Russian drones struck three ambulances in Kramatorsk on 5 October. In August, a Russian strike destroyed a World Health Organization humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro.

Team had moved from Lyman

Three members of the society’s Lyman city branch were hurt. The branch had moved to Sloviansk because of the security situation and kept working there. All three were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds and burns. The building where the team worked took heavy damage, and a fire caused by the attack damaged the organization’s property.

The society’s Donetsk Oblast branch later added that a fourth person suffered a concussion, and that all four were hospitalized. The Red Cross condemned attacks on civilian infrastructure and humanitarian workers.

Bomb hit the warming center

The strike came at 12:45 in the Lisnyi microdistrict, Sloviansk city military administration head Vadym Liakh wrote. He later identified the weapon as a FAB-250, a 250-kg air-dropped bomb. Eight people were injured, and five apartment blocks were damaged, Liakh said. He described the warming center’s building as damaged, while Suspilne Donbas reported it destroyed.

Two Russian strikes on Sloviansk that day killed at least one person, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin wrote. Liakh said a Russian attack on the Semenivka neighborhood killed a 55-year-old woman. On 14 October, Filashkin reported that Russian attacks killed three people across Donetsk Oblast on 13 October, in Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Starovarvarivka.

Russian drones hit Ukraine's power grid, warehouses, a food warehouse, a home-improvement store, and a farm overnight on 9 October, Ukrainian officials and emergency services reported. The strikes triggered emergency power cuts in Kyiv and other regions and killed at least three people across the country.

As Russia continues its daily terror attacks, it has likely begun its winter strike campaign early, aiming to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable, ISW assessed. Those strikes now reach beyond the grid to the businesses that store and sell goods, adding to damage Ukraine's Economy Ministry expects to reach up to $10 billion this year.

Power cut in Kyiv and other regions

Russia launched 136 drones overnight, 93 of them jet-powered, Ukraine's Air Force said. Air defenses downed or suppressed 114. Drones hit eight locations, and debris fell at seven more.

DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy company, introduced emergency power cuts on Kyiv's right bank and in the Bucha and Vyshhorod districts on the grid operator's orders. Ukrenergo, the national grid operator, imposed emergency outages in some regions, citing the strain Russian attacks put on the system. Planned schedules were suspended there. Hourly cuts across parts of Ukraine had already been set for the whole day.

The cuts came a day after a Russian strike knocked out several grid elements supplying Kyiv, leaving many consumers without power. Russia has sharply stepped up attacks on Ukraine's energy system in recent weeks, deliberately targeting power lines and transformers, Ukraine's Energy Ministry said.

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Warehouses and a store

In the Bucha district of Kyiv Oblast, Russia hit warehouses and injured three people, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said. One was hospitalized. Rescuers were searching for a woman who may be under the rubble.

In Odesa, a strike damaged the roof of a warehouse storing food and started a fire, the region's emergency service reported. In the south of the oblast, Russia damaged buildings at holiday resorts and destroyed a café.

Near Chernihiv, Russia hit a site just outside the city after 03:00, the city council said. A Suspilne correspondent at the scene reported that a drone hit the Epicenter store, part of a large Ukrainian home-improvement chain. Russian forces also struck a farm in the Kulykivka community. No one was hurt in Chernihiv Oblast.

Russia has already destroyed more than two-fifths of Ukraine's modern warehouse space.

Three killed overnight

In Zaporizhzhia, Russia struck near an apartment building, killing a man, the Zaporizhzhia Oblast administration said. The number of injured rose to nine, including a 14-year-old girl, regional prosecutors said. One strike landed near an after-school education center.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, falling drone debris started a fire, and a man born in 1959 was killed, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast head Svitlana Onyshchuk said.

In Shyroka Balka, Kherson Oblast, a Russian drone dropped explosives on a house at about 06:20, killing a 74-year-old woman and injuring a 68-year-old man, regional prosecutors reported.

Russia injured three women in a Kharkiv suburb, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said. In the Nikopol district, a 24-year-old woman was injured, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said.

Poland scrambled military aircraft as Russia struck targets in western Ukraine, its Operational Command said.

The past day's toll

Over the past 24 hours, Russia killed two people and injured 18 in Zaporizhzhia and the Zaporizhzhia district, regional council head Ivan Fedorov said. In Sumy Oblast, one man was killed and 14 people were injured, including two 12-year-old boys, the regional administration reported.

In Kherson Oblast, four people were injured, including a child, Kherson Oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin said. In Mykolaiv Oblast, a Russian drone injured two children aged three months and one year, acting oblast head Heorhii Reshetilov said. Three people were injured in Kharkiv Oblast, Syniehubov reported.

In Donetsk Oblast, Russia killed 35 people and injured 25 on 8 October, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Thirty-two of them died in Kramatorsk, most in a Russian bomb strike on two passenger buses.

Russian forces struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on the morning of 8 October, hitting two route buses carrying residents and killing dozens of civilians. The Donetsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened a war-crimes investigation.

Russia has turned everyday movement in frontline Donetsk Oblast into a lethal risk, striking city buses, ambulances, and cars in places its army has not been able to capture.

A route bus run turned deadly

The attack came at around 10:00, catching two route buses in the impact zone. The prosecutor's office said the attackers likely used a UMPB D-30SN. HUR, Ukraine's military intelligence, describes it as a guided glide bomb that can fly up to 100 km when released from an altitude of 12–15 km and carries a warhead equal to a FAB-250 aerial bomb.

The toll rose through the day, from 12 dead in the first reports to 30 killed and 20 wounded by 14:55, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Across Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed 33 people that day, including the 30 in Kramatorsk and three in nearby Bilenke, the State Emergency Service said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strike would not go unanswered.

Buses pulled off the roads

Filashkin ordered the Kramatorsk and Sloviansk city military administrations to suspend public transport, citing the sharp deterioration in security. Buses had become an attractive target for Russian forces, he said, and the authorities could not risk the lives of passengers and drivers. He also urged everyone still in Donetsk Oblast to leave for safer parts of Ukraine. Kramatorsk is a frequent target of Russian attacks. Russia had not commented on the strike as of publication.

The city has been under daily fire. On 5 October, Russian FPV drones hit ambulances and an apartment block in Kramatorsk, killing a woman and wounding four, the prosecutor's office reported. Over the previous day, Russian forces shelled Donetsk Oblast settlements 31 times and 256 people left the front line, Filashkin said.

A Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Pryluky, a town in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv Oblast, killed 22 people on 7 October, regional police reported on the morning of 8 October. Five of the dead were children: three one-year-old boys, an eight-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old girl, police said.

Russian strikes on Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, and Kyiv killed 28 people on 7 October, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. For the town, it was the second deadly missile strike since May. Behind the toll are families like this one: three generations hit by a single strike.

A family visit that ended under rubble

Three-year-old Zlatoslava is now in the Chernihiv Oblast children's hospital, Pryluky district police chief Vladyslav Stoianov told. Her mother, Kateryna, is hospitalized too. The two had come on the evening of 6 October to visit Kateryna's sister, police officer Yuliia Malysh. The girl's father stayed home in Lynovytsia, a village 15 km away.

Yuliia was wounded and is in hospital, Stoianov said. Her husband, Oleh Malysh, was killed. Until recently, Oleh had fought at the front in the Chernihiv Oblast police rifle battalion. The sisters' mother, Liudmyla, had also come over that evening, and she died too. All the family details come from Stoianov, who was describing a colleague's family.

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Footage of an emergency worker carrying a little girl from the ruins reached almost all media, Vyhivskyi wrote in the same post. Suspilne first reported that the filmed rescuer had carried Zlatoslava. It then corrected itself: he had carried a different child, five-year-old Zoriana. Vyhivskyi also gives the girl's age as five, and he named the rescuer as State Emergency Service section commander Pavlo Levchenko. With colleagues, Levchenko freed the girl and her mother after the blast threw them out of the building.

Russian FPV drones hit three ambulances and, separately, a residential high-rise in Kramatorsk late on 5 October, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office said. The strike on the high-rise killed a woman and injured another, and three medical workers were wounded trying to save their vehicles. Prosecutors have opened war-crimes investigations.

Russian drones attack Ukrainian civilians every day, and Ukraine's UN envoy has cited "human safari" and repeat strikes on medics as grounds to strip Moscow of its Security Council seat. Kherson, Nikopol, and Kramatorsk are all cities where drone operators pick civilian targets in real time.

Drones aimed at ambulances

Between 22:00 and 22:25, the Russian army deliberately directed two FPV drones at ambulances parked on a Kramatorsk street, prosecutors said. Three workers of the ambulance service were injured while trying to save the vehicles after the first hit. They suffered blast injuries, shrapnel wounds to the body and limbs, burns, and concussions, and received medical care. Three ambulances were damaged.

FPV drones are flown by an operator watching a live camera feed until the moment of impact. Prosecutors called the strike targeted.

A woman killed at home

At 22:10, a Russian drone hit a residential high-rise in the city. A 49-year-old woman was killed. Another resident, a 68-year-old woman, suffered a broken foot, shrapnel wounds to the body and limbs, and a concussion, according to prosecutors. The Kramatorsk district prosecutor's office has opened criminal proceedings over war crimes.

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Across Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed three people on 5 October, in Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Sukhanivka, and injured 11, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. His morning tally, posted before the prosecutors' report, did not include the Kramatorsk death.

Kramatorsk under the drone hunt

Russian drone operators have hunted people in Kramatorsk for months. In June, a Russian pilot chose to kill a man he saw on a city street. Russia strikes the city daily, and in August it dropped eight FAB-250 bombs on Kramatorsk, killing one person and injuring 18.

The same drone hunting of civilians has run for years in Kherson, where Ukraine's Security Service has named 10 Russian servicemen it ties to the "human safari." A UN inquiry has traced the Kherson campaign up the chain of command. In April, ISW found Russians using such tactics across southern Ukraine, including in Nikopol.

Medics have been repeated targets. In March, a Russian FPV drone killed two medics in an ambulance in Kharkiv Oblast, and in February, Russian drones hit an ambulance and a shop there, killing three. In Kyiv, a Russian missile attack damaged a maternity hospital in September.

Russia struck Kyiv's Northern Bridge with a drone again on 4 October, the second hit on the crossing in two days, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The attack damaged a heating main and rerouted public transport, as overnight and morning strikes also hit Kyiv Oblast, Dnipro, and Sumy, where one person was killed.

Russia's air attacks on Ukrainian cities are daily, and in recent days they have hit a Kyiv school sheltering children and turned supermarkets into targets. Strikes on the crossings between the capital's two banks add another layer: they disrupt how millions of people move through the city every day.

A crater on the Northern Bridge, no hot water across the river

The drone hit the bridge's roadway, and videos posted by local channels showed a crater, Liga reported. The strike also damaged a heating main, cutting hot water in Kyiv's Desnianskyi district on the left bank, Klitschko wrote. Repair crews are working to restore it, he added.

Kyiv's transport operator Kyivpastrans cut trolleybus routes short of the river. Routes 29, 30, 31, and 47 now run from the left bank only to Darnytsia Square, and routes 29, 30, and 31 run from the right bank only to Pochaina metro station. Buses 21, 73, 101, and 114 run only to Darnytsia Square because the bridge is closed to traffic.

Russia first hit the Northern Bridge on 3 October, damaging its roadway and trolleybus lines. Two people were injured, and one of them was hospitalized, Klitschko said. A day earlier, repeated drone strikes hit the Southern Bridge and forced its closure. Overnight on 4 October, drone debris also fell on two locations in Kyiv's Dniprovskyi district, Klitschko reported.

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Ukraine's government has already begun work on earth dams and pontoon crossings in case the city's Dnipro bridges are knocked out, Restoration Minister Mykola Kalashnyk told Suspilne.

The strike came as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyiv. Ukraine and Germany would reach important agreements during the visit, Zelenskyy said. This week alone, Russia launched more than 1,900 attack drones, 1,700 guided bombs, and 25 missiles at Ukraine, more than 800 of the drones jet-powered, he added.

135 drones overnight

Russia launched 135 attack drones at Ukraine overnight, 52 of them jet-powered Shaheds, Ukraine's Air Force reported. By 08:30, air defenses had downed or suppressed 123 drones and two Banderol or Dan-T missiles. Strikes hit five locations, and debris fell on five more.

In Kyiv Oblast, Russian drones damaged six detached houses, a car, a church, a primary school, a café, and a medical facility in Boryspil Raion, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said. No one was killed or injured.

Dnipro and Sumy

Russia attacked a communications company's building in central Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported.

"The whole street there is covered in broken glass, debris, and branches," Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov wrote, adding that nearby homes and schools escaped damage.

In Sumy, Russian drones struck an ordinary medical supplies warehouse and killed one person, Zelenskyy said. Strikes across the city injured seven people, two of them seriously, the Sumy city council said. The attack also damaged gas networks and left 70 apartments without gas.

Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes from the evening of 30 September into the morning of 1 October, striking a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital, the city's mayor and emergency services said. The children inside the school were in its shelter and came through unharmed. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.

Children across Ukraine now start the school year in bomb shelters, as Russian drones, missiles, and glide bombs keep hitting schools, homes, and hospitals far from the front—part of a civilian toll the UN says has already outrun all of last year's.

A school full of children, all in the shelter

A Russian drone hit a school in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district on the morning of 1 October and started a fire, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that the children were in the shelter. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were sheltering inside, and none were hurt, police said. The jet-powered drone damaged the building's facade at third-floor level, RBC-Ukraine reported.

A café and warehouses among the sites hit

On the evening of 30 September, a Russian strike started a fire at a café on the ground floor of a residential building in Solomianskyi, while warehouse buildings burned in the northern Obolonskyi district. One person was injured in the warehouse fire and handed to medics, RBC-Ukraine reported.

42 sites damaged across Kyiv Oblast

Across Kyiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours damaged 42 sites and injured six people, regional authorities reported.

Kyiv is now under Russian air attack daily. On 28 September, Russian drones hit the city center in daylight, including the National Academy of Sciences, and earlier waves struck filling stations and other everyday sites across the capital.

Russia is preparing to make daily life in Kyiv harder before winter, aiming at the ordinary places civilians use rather than at military sites, The Economist reported. Ukrainian officials say the push blends bombing, sabotage, and disinformation, and expect it to peak in November.

Every winter of its full-scale invasion, Russia has tried to freeze Ukrainians into surrender, and each year the strikes reach deeper into ordinary life. The civilian casualties recorded in 2026 have already passed the whole of last year, the UN says.

From the power grid to the grocery store

Russia has already turned its drones on Kyiv's supermarkets, food warehouses, and data centers this year. On 28 September, a Russian jet drone struck the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv. The strike killed two people, the Academy said. Survivors climbed from the windows of the burning building. A senior Ukrainian official told The Economist the Kremlin now wants shoppers too afraid to enter a store. Russia is also keeping its winter routine, hitting electricity, water, and sewage systems.

Cheaper jet drones that stream live to their pilots

Most of the damage now comes from Russia's cheap jet drones, The Economist said. Pilots guide them onto targets and watch a live video feed. They are hard to stop, and Russia's ballistic missiles are deadlier still as Ukraine's supply of Patriot interceptors dwindles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had agreed a new Patriot interceptor package, but it remains short of interceptors of its own. A security official told The Economist that Russia has thousands of drones stockpiled and plans to use its entire ballistic missile stock within two months.

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Sabotage, chaos, and a city that won't switch off

Ukraine's counter-intelligence services say they foil seven or eight Russian plots a week, and officials believe some sleeper cells remain. The campaign's third element, disinformation, targets war fatigue and corruption scandals. Russia runs the same plan every year, hoping its bot farms will push Ukrainians onto the streets to demand surrender, said Andrii Kovalenko, who heads the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

"It's nonsense," he told The Economist, adding that someone is feeding the idea to Putin so they can steal more money.

Kyiv is also far harder to shut down than Moscow assumes, Kovalenko said. The city's internet is too decentralized for a handful of strikes to knock out, The Economist noted. Energy expert Olha Babii said the test is how fast crews restore power, not whether it can be destroyed. The capital is emptying, its population down from about 3.7 million to 3.3 million by The Economist's count.