Ukraine came under heavy Russian air attacks from Thursday night through Friday, killing at least 14 people across the country.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city near the Russian border, suffered repeated strikes overnight and into Friday morning. Local authorities reported four rocket attacks and at least 20 drones struck the city, damaging homes and offices. Many of the drones were Iranian-built Shahed models fitted with jet engines, which can travel the short distance from Russia to Kharkiv quickly and are hard to intercept.
At least eight people were killed in Kharkiv and in frontline regions including Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In Kyiv and surrounding areas, daytime missile and drone strikes killed at least one person, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the local military administration. Three people were killed in the northern Sumy region, and two people were reported killed in the Zhytomyr and Dnipropetrovsk regions, local officials said.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched a total of 542 drones and 37 missiles since Thursday night targeting critical infrastructure. Air defenses reportedly shot down 515 drones and 26 missiles.
Ukrainian officials warned Moscow is using new routes, modernized drones and evolving tactics, including follow-up daytime strikes after overnight barrages — a pattern seen twice this week as Russia probes Ukrainian air defenses. The scale of the attacks prompted Poland to scramble fighter jets and heighten air defense and radar readiness in its airspace.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of an “Easter escalation,” saying he spoke by phone with the Pope as attacks were underway. Zelenskyy said Kyiv had been prepared to consider a holiday truce but that Moscow had not engaged in diplomacy. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that “Russian terrorists reject diplomacy and peace efforts” and must face strong responses.
The assaults occurred as US-brokered peace talks have stalled amid the war in the Middle East, raising uncertainty about future weapons supplies to Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he invited US negotiators to Kyiv as an alternative technical-team format to broader trilateral talks.
On the front, Zelenskyy described the 1,200-kilometer frontline in eastern Ukraine as largely stable and “slightly in the positive” for Ukraine, adding he did not see a large-scale threat at present and claiming Ukrainian forces had repelled a planned Russian offensive in March. Russia currently controls just under 20% of Ukraine’s territory; open-source analysis suggests the pace of Russian advance has slowed since last year, with limited gains in recent months.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted 192 Ukrainian drones overnight, which it suggested may have targeted oil export facilities near St. Petersburg. In Moscow, former president Dmitry Medvedev warned against a “tolerant attitude” toward Ukraine joining the European Union, arguing the EU could evolve into a military bloc hostile to Russia and pointing to divisions within NATO.
Edited by: Karl Sexton
