Russia Hits Ukraine with Drones, Missiles Overnight

Millions trek to shelters nightly or take their chances at home as unceasing missile and drone attacks drag on. Some Ukrainians are looking — with hope or sarcasm — to Trump for respite.

Russia’s latest overnight missile and drone attacks across Ukraine killed 11 people, including a 1-year-old boy, and wounded dozens of others, while triggering the longest aerial attack alert so far in the war in Kyiv, the capital.

The warning siren lasted for nearly 10 hours in Kyiv, where four people were wounded and numerous buildings were ignited by debris from exploding drones that were shot down.

In recent weeks, sirens have rung out almost every night in the capital and across the country as Russia has launched repeated attacks. Millions of civilians have lost sleep as they dragged themselves from bed to seek shelter in a subway, basement or apartment corridor. Others stay put and hope for the best.

In the attacks from Thursday night into Friday, 10 people were killed in Zaporizhzhia, including the toddler, local officials reported. The attacks wounded another 41 people, four of them children. According to Ivan Fedorov, regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, more than 130 houses and a hospital were damaged in five strikes.

In another southern city, Odesa, one person was killed and nine wounded. Among the buildings damaged was a 19th-century school that had just been renovated before the war began in 2022. In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, 25 people were wounded by a missile that landed near a university campus, damaging a fountain and nearby buildings.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched one ballistic missile, four cruise missiles and 92 exploding drones at Ukraine overnight.

Amid the violence, there was a sign of cooperation on humanitarian issues. A government office in Kyiv said the bodies of 563 Ukrainian soldiers were returned after a meeting on Friday of the human rights commissioners from the parliaments of Russia and Ukraine. The International Committee of the Red Cross oversaw the meeting — held, for the first time, in neighboring Belarus — between Dmytro Lubinets from Ukraine and Tatyana Moskalkova of Russia. Prisoner exchanges were also discussed.

Among Ukrainians, the sleepless nights have prompted discussions on social media — sometimes hopefully, often sarcastically — about the possibility of a quick negotiated end to the war, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised.

“The end of the war! Can we start the countdown?” wrote Andriy Peretyazhko, a Kyiv resident who works in insurance, on his Facebook page.

Anastasia Chumachenko, 36, a mother of four who lives in Kyiv, said she really wanted to believe Trump’s pledge. “Our evil enemy for a number of years is throwing bombs at us every night,” she said in an interview. “I sleep in the hallway with my children. I am very tired.”

Ukrainian soldiers on the front line mostly responded to Trump’s election win with dark humor.

“We are waiting for the war to end within the next hour,” said a Ukrainian soldier who asked to be identified only by a nickname, Sam, in a voice message from his position near the eastern city of Pokrovsk, the most dangerous part of the front now.

Capt. Oleh Voitsekhovsky, who is fighting in the eastern Donbas region on a section of the front that is one of the few where Ukrainian forces have made some gains lately, said he was always closely monitoring the political situation in United States.

“We now have a whole new reality,” he said. “As of now, full responsibility for the situation in Ukraine and the Middle East lies with the Republicans and with Trump personally. Now he is responsible for everything. So we will see how will he stop the war in 24 hours, as he said.”

As of Thursday, Mr. Trump had spoken with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, but not with Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Zelensky has voiced skepticism about a quick resolution. “I believe President Trump wants a quick fix,” he said Thursday at a summit of European leaders in Budapest, Hungary. But “‘wants’ doesn’t mean it will turn out that way.”

Olha Konovalova contributed reporting from Kyiv.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• For Putin, Trump’s Win Is a New Opening: Russians close to the Kremlin voiced optimism that Donald J. Trump could help end the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. But Moscow also remembers Trump’s first term as a disappointment.
• Incendiary Devices on Cargo Planes: Western officials are investigating whether devices planted at shipping hubs in Europe may have been a test run by Russian operatives for placing them on planes bound for the U.S.
• U.S. Fears a Grim Phase: American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains, and the sense of pessimism in Kyiv and Washington is deepening.

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• Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
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