At least 12 people have been killed and dozens injured across Ukraine in overnight Russian drone and missile attacks, regional officials and emergency services said.
Three children were killed in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, and a man in his 70s was killed in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the state emergencies service said.
It comes a day after Kyiv suffered one of the heaviest assaults since the start of the Russian invasion, with Russian aerial attacks killing at least 13.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence units shot down or intercepted 95 Ukrainian drones over a number of Russian regions, including Moscow, during a four-hour period on Saturday night. No casualties were reported.
The drone attack forced a brief suspension of all flights at Moscow’s airports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.
This includes Crimea – Ukraine’s southern peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
In a statement on Facebook, Khmelnytskyi regional head Serhiy Tyurin said four people were killed and another five were injured in the Russian attacks.
“Six private houses were destroyed, and another 20 damaged,” he added.
Kyiv regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said three people were killed and 10 others were injured.
He posted photos on social media of several houses set ablaze after the Russian strikes.
Ukraine’s state emergencies service DSNS later reported the toll had risen to four people killed and 16 injured, including three children.
In the capital Kyiv, local officials reported 11 injuries, multiple fires and damage to residential buildings, including a dormitory.
Hundreds of people were seen sheltering in underground stations of the city’s metro. It comes as the capital marks its annual Kyiv Day holiday on Sunday.
In Zhytomyr, DSNS said three children aged eight, 12 and 17 were killed, 10 people were injured and private homes were “destroyed and damaged”.
DSNS said the body of an elderly man was pulled out from a five-storey residential building hit by a drone in Mykolaiv. Another five people were injured.
In Kharkiv, regional authorities reported three injuries.
In Russia, the defence ministry said that Ukrainian drones targeted eight Russian regions.
“From 20:00 Moscow time (17:00 GMT) on 24 May to 00:00 on 25 May, air defence units on duty destroyed and intercepted 95 Ukrainian aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles,” the ministry said in a statement.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that 12 drones heading towards the capital were shot down.
He added that emergency services crews were deployed to assess damage caused by falling drone debris.
In the Tula region, just south of Moscow, drone wreckage crashed in the courtyard of a residential building, smashing windows in a number of apartments, local governor Dmitriy Milyaev said.
No-one was injured, he added.
The attacks came as Russia and Ukraine take part in prisoner swaps agreed after talks between the two sides in Turkey.
On Friday, Ukraine and Russia each handed over 390 soldiers and civilians in the biggest prisoner exchange since Russia launched its full-scale assault in February 2022.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that another 307 Ukrainian prisoners had returned home as part of an exchange deal with the Kremlin.
The two countries have agreed to swap a total of 1,000 prisoners each, and another exchange is expected on Sunday.
The swap follows the first face-to-face talks between the two sides in three years, which took place in Turkey.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal.
Trump said he believed the call had gone “very well”, and added that Russia and Ukraine will “immediately start” negotiations toward a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.
However, Putin has only said Russia would work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace”, and has not accepted a 30-day ceasefire.
