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LAST UPDATE | 23 Jun
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelenskyy has said that Russia fired over 350 drones and 16 missiles at the country in overnight strikes that have killed at least ten people, including an 11-year-old girl.
The strikes come a day after the country’s top military commander vowed to intensify strikes on Russia.
Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year war have stalled, with the last direct meeting between the two sides almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks scheduled.
AFP journalists in Kyiv heard the buzzing of a drone flying over the city centre and explosions, as well as gunfire.
Journalists also saw around ten people sheltering in the basement of a residential building in the centre of Kyiv waiting for the attack to end, most of them scrolling their phones for news.
“Another massive attack on the capital. Possibly, several waves of enemy drones,” said a statement from Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration.
In a statement this morning, Zelenskyy said five apartment buildings in Kyiv were damaged, with a total of six people killed. He said another person was killed in the southern city of Bila Tserkva, where a drone struck a hospital.
After the strikes on Iran's nuclear program facilities, there was a lot of uproar from Moscow — the Russian leadership performatively condemned the “missile-and-bomb” actions. Today, Moscow is silent after the Russian army carried out a completely cynical strike using… pic.twitter.com/xq6TUsfWM2
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 23, 2025
He said 352 drones were launched in the overnight strikes, including 159 Iranian-made Shahed drones, along with 16 missiles.
“Preliminary reports indicate that ballistic weapons from North Korea were also used,” he said. “A large number of drones and missiles were shot down by our air defenders – but not all.”
The Ukrainian president said there had been “a lot of uproar from Moscow” after the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, which he said Russia “performatively condemned”. But he said Moscow was silent after striking civilian infrastructure.
“Everyone in countries neighbouring Russia, Iran, and North Korea should be thinking carefully about whether they could protect lives if this coalition of murderers persists and continues spreading their terror,” he said.
Zelenskyy today landed in the UK – one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies – for a surprise visit, where he said he would be discussing defence issues and sanctions on Russia.
Zelensky met with Britain’s King Charles at Windsor Castle and a Ukrainian source also said that he would meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The visit comes ahead of a NATO summit later this week in The Hague.
Zelenskyy is set to attend on the sidelines but his involvement is being kept to a minimum to avoid a confrontation with US President Donald Trump.
Since returning to office, Trump has upended the West’s approach towards Russia’s war on Ukraine by undercutting Kyiv and opening the door to closer ties with Moscow.
The latest strikes came after Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky vowed to intensify strikes on Russia.
“We will not just sit in defence because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” he told reporters, including AFP.
Syrsky said Ukraine would continue its strikes on Russian military targets, which he said had proved “effective”.
“Of course we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth,” he said.
Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war, targeting energy and military infrastructure sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the front line.
Kyiv says the strikes are a fair response to deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.
At least four people were killed in an overnight Russian strike on an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, while a strike on a Ukrainian army training ground later in the day killed three others, officials said.
In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fibre-optic drones that are tethered and difficult to jam.
“Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he said.
He also claimed that Ukraine still held 90 square kilometres of territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious cross-border incursion last August.
“These are our pre-emptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” he said.
Russia said in April that it had gained full control of the Kursk region and denies that Kyiv has a presence there.
Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 – in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.
The Russian army said Sunday that it had captured the village of Petrivske in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.
Russian forces also sent at least 47 drones and fired three missiles towards Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said.
With reporting from © AFP 2025
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