Russia's military said on Thursday, November 12, that it had carried out a massive overnight strike on military factories across Ukraine, including Kyiv, where the mayor said a Russian drone had struck an apartment block. Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of Thursday, a Reuters witness said.

Source: Reuters

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one woman had been reported killed and five people injured after a Russian drone struck a nine-storey building in the city's Solomyanskyi district, setting it ablaze, Reuters reported. Later Ukrainian reporting said the woman was 44 years old, that the fire spread from the third through the sixth floors of the building in the Solomianka district, with partial destruction at the fifth-floor level, that three people were rescued, and that seven residents were injured, most of them with acute stress reactions.

Source: Hromadske (h.ua)

What each side says was hit

The Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement that it had hit a rocket factory in Kyiv and a drone assembly workshop and a missile fuel factory in the wider Kyiv region, as well as electricity substations in the western Zhytomyr region. The Russian attacks had also damaged energy and civilian infrastructure in the north-western Rivne region, a local Ukrainian official said on Telegram.

Ukrainian reporting said the combined attack began at 18:00 on November 11 and continued through the night. It said Russia used ballistic missiles of the Iskander-M, KN-23 and S-400 types and Tsirkon anti-ship missiles, together with 123 strike drones, including 73 jet-powered Shaheds. By 08:00 on November 12, Ukrainian air defences said they had shot down or suppressed 89 drones, including 51 jet-powered aircraft, and five Bandol/Dan-T munitions — 94 targets neutralised in all. Direct hits were recorded at 17 locations and falling debris at 18 others, and damage was recorded in eight regions.

Damage beyond the Kyiv apartment block

In Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district, Ukrainian reporting said, another drone fell onto a roadway, setting a passenger car on fire and partially damaging a bus; a 32-year-old man suffered burns to his upper limbs. In the Obukhiv district of Kyiv region, production and warehouse premises were damaged and partially destroyed, and workers who had left after the air-raid alert escaped unharmed. In Brovary, a missile strike set a truck carrying household chemicals on fire near warehouses; its 54-year-old driver sustained severe head, eye, arm and thigh injuries and was hospitalised in moderate condition. Damage also included an electricity-generation facility in Zaporizhzhia and high-voltage substations in Odesa and Rivne.

Ukraine also struck back overnight. In Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that air defence forces had downed five Ukrainian drones heading for the Russian capital. Russia's Defence Ministry said a total of 71 Ukrainian drones had been brought down across Russia overnight.

The strike came even as US-brokered diplomacy continued: US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been shuttling between Moscow and Kyiv, and on Thursday Kushner said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to expand the next round of talks to include European nations — a process this latest exchange of attacks on the two capitals now overshadows. What happens next: Ukraine's energy and air-defence repairs, and whether the expanded talks round proceeds on schedule.