Russian missile attack on Kyiv damages apartment blocks and injures two people

Missile attack on Kyiv

Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Ukrainian capital on Saturday, 7 November, according to Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko. Debris from the strikes damaged a five-storey apartment building in a western district, and the facade of another residential building was also damaged. Klitschko wrote on Telegram as the attack unfolded, describing the strikes in blunt terms.

“Explosions in the Kyiv suburbs. The enemy is hitting infrastructure with ballistic missiles.”

The city's military administration said two people were injured and that a building housing a kindergarten was damaged. Officials kept warning residents of the possibility of more strikes for hours after the attack.

Warnings before the strike

On Friday, 6 November, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that Ukraine had intelligence pointing to a new strike being prepared against the energy sector, the bridges over the Dnipro and civilian infrastructure. He said he had spoken with the people in charge of Ukraine's long-range strikes and that Russia would receive Ukraine's answer. In the same address he urged Kyiv's Western partners to deliver interceptors for Patriot air defence systems. Recent Russian strikes had caused heavy damage to the energy sector and infrastructure, particularly in the capital, and Ukraine fears another difficult winter.

Talks in Brussels and US signals

Two days of talks in Brussels among allies concluded before the strike. Ukrainian lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said in an online post that officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the European Union took part, along with representatives of the World Bank and the US investment group BlackRock. The discussions covered postwar reconstruction, funding for 2027 and security guarantees backed by Ukraine's Western allies.

In a television interview aired late on Thursday, 5 November, Zelenskyy said his government is seeking specific guarantees on how postwar security support would work. He told Ukraine's 1+1 broadcaster that he wants clear answers on what happens if Russia attacks again.

“What matters is that it's clear on paper.”

Zelenskyy also said Democrats' sweeping victories in this week's US midterm elections could help Kyiv, including faster delivery of Patriot interceptors. On the same Thursday, US President Donald Trump met Kirill Dmitriev, the special envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the White House and said a deal between Russia and Ukraine may be imminent. Trump did not meet the Ukrainian delegation that day.

Stalled negotiations and the Abu Dhabi round

A US-led round of Ukrainian-Russian talks is scheduled to open in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November. It would be the first trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow since mid-February, when talks in Geneva ended without progress on a settlement. Negotiations had been stalled since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in February.

Moscow demands that Ukraine's army withdraw fully from the eastern Donetsk region. Kyiv refuses, arguing that such a withdrawal would leave the country vulnerable to new Russian attacks. Meanwhile, a guided bomb strike on Monday, 2 November, hit a former school being used as a humanitarian aid distribution centre, and the death toll from that strike was still rising in reports on Friday.