Ukraine was hit by heavy Russian air attacks from Thursday night into Friday, leaving at least 14 people dead across the country.
Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, endured repeated strikes overnight and into Friday morning. Local officials reported four rocket attacks and at least 20 drones struck the city, damaging homes and offices. Many of the drones were identified as Iranian-built Shahed models fitted with jet engines, which can cover the short distance from Russia to Kharkiv quickly and are difficult to intercept.
At least eight of the dead were in Kharkiv and frontline areas including Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Daytime missile and drone strikes in Kyiv and nearby districts killed at least one person, local military administration head Mykola Kalashnyk said. Three people were reported killed in the northern Sumy region, and two were killed in the Zhytomyr and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to local officials.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched about 542 drones and 37 missiles since Thursday night, targeting critical infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses reportedly shot down 515 drones and 26 missiles.
Ukrainian officials warned that Moscow is trying new flight routes, deploying modernized drones and changing tactics, including follow-up daytime strikes after overnight barrages — a pattern used this week as Russia probes Ukraine’s air defenses. The scale of the assault led Poland to scramble fighter jets and raise air defense and radar readiness along its airspace.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attacks an “Easter escalation,” saying he spoke with the Pope as the strikes were underway. Zelenskyy said Kyiv had been prepared to consider a holiday truce but that Moscow did not engage in diplomacy. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X that “Russian terrorists reject diplomacy and peace efforts” and must face strong responses.
The strikes came as US-brokered peace talks have stalled amid the wider war in the Middle East, complicating prospects for future weapons supplies to Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he had invited US negotiators to Kyiv as an alternative, technical-team format to broader trilateral talks.
On the front lines, Zelenskyy described the roughly 1,200-kilometre frontline in eastern Ukraine as largely stable and “slightly in the positive” for Ukraine. He said he did not see a large-scale threat at present and asserted that Ukrainian forces had repelled a planned Russian offensive in March. Russia currently controls just under 20% of Ukraine’s territory; open-source analysts say the pace of Russian advances has slowed since last year, with only limited gains in recent months.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted 192 Ukrainian drones overnight and suggested those drones may have been aimed at oil export facilities near St. Petersburg. In Moscow, former president Dmitry Medvedev warned against a “tolerant attitude” to Ukraine joining the European Union, arguing the bloc could become a military threat to Russia and pointing to divisions within NATO.
Edited by Karl Sexton