Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv on the night of Oct 21-22, injuring six people. At 2 a.m. local time on Oct 22, explosions hit the Dniprovsky district of the city of 3 million, where Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a car service station and a private residential building were damaged. Klitschko said debris also hit another private residential building and noted, "There may be people trapped under the rubble."
Casualties and previous strikes
In the Darnitsky district, missiles hit near a transportation infrastructure facility on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Vladyslav, a resident living near a strike, said his windows blew out when the explosion happened. He saw a "terrifying glow" outside, saw a house on fire, heard people screaming, and rescued a man and his wife from the burning building. I find it lucky that neighbors were nearby to help save these people. At 3 a.m. local time, at least 13 explosions rocked the city, which is about the size of Berlin, in less than eight minutes. Journalists reported power and wifi outages in parts of the city before another round of explosions at 3:34 a.m. The Kyiv City Military Administration reported that a building housing a medical facility was damaged in the Pecherskyi district and a fire broke out in a restaurant in the Sviatoshynskyi district.
A Russian drone attack on the morning of Oct 21 killed at least two people and injured two others. Russian drones struck a hospital in Solomyanskyi District and a medical facility in Holosiivskyi District on Oct 20, injuring 12 people. Three people died and four were injured that morning after a drone struck commuter traffic. The UN Human Rights Office reported in early October that an average of more than 400 civilians were killed or injured every week in Ukraine during the first eight months of 2026, which is a 55% increase from the same period in 2025.
These strikes follow shows of support for trilateral peace negotiations by President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky said, "We hope that Russia will follow through." While Kyiv was under red alert, U.S. President Donald Trump said at a roundtable conference that a deal to "settle the war" is "maybe now the closest we’ve been."
