Firefighters tackle a fire that broke out following a drone strike on the Ukrainian capшtal Kyiv, 6 June 2025. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
Four people were killed and a further 20 injured as Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone strikes on Kyiv overnight, authorities in the Ukrainian capital said on Friday morning, just a day after Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump that Russia would respond to Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian airfields over the weekend.
According to the Kyiv City Military Administration, the strikes damaged buildings and vehicles in at least six districts of the capital, with three people rescued from an apartment on the 11th floor of a 16-storey block after a fire broke out. Rescue efforts were ongoing at several locations, the administration added.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said three of the four people killed in the strikes were emergency responders who had been working at the scene of earlier attacks, when Russia “deliberately targeted civilian and critical infrastructure”.
The rescue workers were “brave, loyal to their oath and devoted to the mission of saving lives” and had been “working under fire to help people”, Klymenko said, adding that a further nine emergency workers had been injured in the overnight attacks.
Part of the city’s metro network was closed following damage to tracks and cables between the Darnytsia and Livoberezhna stations, the Kyiv Metro press service said, while over 2,000 households were left without electricity, according to energy provider DTEK.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said on Friday morning that it had destroyed 174 Ukrainian drones and three missiles launched at 12 Russian regions overnight, as well as at annexed Crimea.
The governor of Russia’s southern Saratov region, Roman Busargin, said that an apartment block in the city of Engels had been damaged as a result of a Ukrainian drone strike overnight, though he added that there was now “no danger” and that evacuated residents would be able to return to their homes later on Friday morning.
Busargin also confirmed that a fire had broken out at an “industrial facility” in Engels following a drone strike, with independent Russian and Ukrainian sources reporting that the facility in question was an oil depot used to supply the nearby Engels-2 Air Base, whose fleet has been used extensively to strike targets in Ukraine.
Yevgeny Pervyshov, acting governor of the neighbouring Tambov region, said that falling drone debris had caused a fire at a facility in the city of Michurinsk, thought to be the Progress aviation and missile control system manufacturing plant.
Independent news outlets also reported that explosions were heard near the airport in the city of Bryansk in western Russia, but Governor Alexander Bogomaz made no mention of any such attack in a Telegram post on Friday morning, saying only that air defences in the region had downed 46 Ukrainian drones.