Russian drones struck downtown Kyiv in the middle of the workday Monday, setting fire to the historic headquarters of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences and trapping office workers inside burning buildings.
Some staff escaped by climbing out of the academy’s windows and down firefighters’ ladders. Images of people at the windows spread quickly on social media, where many recalled the World Trade Center 25 years ago and the people who reached for open windows to escape the flames. In Kyiv, the ladders reached them.
A woman was killed in the strike on the academy, according to the Kyiv city military administration. The academy’s press service identified her as an aide to Volodymyr Horbulin, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. Horbulin, 86, now a vice president of the academy, was at work when the drone hit and suffered a minor injury, according to BBC News Ukraine, which first reported the details.
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Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Monday’s attacks on the capital injured 19 people, including three children.
“The terror goes on,” Klitschko told reporters at the academy. “For more than a week Russia has kept attacking Kyiv, disrupting normal life in the city and destroying buildings.”
Another drone set fire to the Dobrobut medical center, near Ukraine’s Constitutional Court.
Air raid sirens had sounded over Kyiv almost without a break since early morning. The warning was there. What changed was speed. Ukraine’s Air Force said 86 of the 124 drones Russia launched between 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. were jet-powered. Air defenses brought down 86 drones in all, but only 49 of them were jets. That means nearly every conventional drone was stopped, while roughly 4 in 10 jets got through.
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The strikes reached well beyond the capital. Russia’s round-the-clock bombardment killed at least seven people across Ukraine and wounded more than 80, officials said. In Dnipro, a drone hit an office center during working hours, killing three people and wounding at least 18. In Kharkiv, a strike on a nine-story apartment building wounded 43 people, including 11 children.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, back from last week’s U.N. General Assembly in New York, said on social media that “Russia will definitely face a response to this.” He called on Ukraine’s partners to stand behind the principle that “terror must never be normalized, anywhere.”
Ukraine is racing to develop a new interceptor fast enough to catch the jet drones.
In Moscow, the Kremlin offered no sign of restraint. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that prospects for a quick peace settlement were dim after recent Ukrainian attacks.
“Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months,” Peskov said. “That is happening right now.”