Russian Daytime Drone Strikes Hit Kyiv Science Academy and Hospital, Killing at Least 7 Nationwide Monday

Russia struck Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv around 1:30 p.m. local time on Monday, Sept. 28, according to a spokesperson for Ukraine's State Emergency Service who spoke to a Euronews reporter at the scene. A jet-powered drone hit a 19th-century building with no military targets nearby, the spokesperson said.

The academy's press service told Ukrinform that an aide to Volodymyr Horbulin, the academy's first vice president and a former top national security official, was killed in the strike. Horbulin himself, one of the architects of Ukraine's missile and space programs, was in the building and suffered minor injuries, according to Suspilne.

"We are not connected with the military. This is an attack on science. It is terrorism," academy president Anatoliy Zagorodny said outside the burning building, according to the Guardian. He said he feared colleagues might still be trapped inside.

Videos posted to social media, cited by the Kyiv Independent, showed people clinging to windows and climbing down firefighters' ladders as smoke poured from the structure, which sits near the German embassy, the National Opera and St. Volodymyr's Cathedral.

A separate drone struck a private medical center nearby, killing at least one more person, the Guardian reported. Images from Al Jazeera and Reuters showed rescue workers evacuating an injured woman from the damaged Dobrobut Hospital.

Nationwide toll climbs past a week of daytime bombardment

Across Ukraine, Monday's attacks killed at least seven people and wounded more than 50, officials told CBS News and Al Jazeera. The breakdown, drawn from multiple Ukrainian officials: three people, including an Azerbaijani national, were killed overnight in wider Kyiv Oblast; three more died and 12 were wounded when a drone hit an office center in Dnipro; and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported 43 people wounded, including 11 children, after a strike on a nine-story apartment building, per CBS News. The Times of India separately cited a Kharkiv figure of 28 injured including nine children, a discrepancy that appears to reflect different reporting windows rather than a contradiction in the underlying event.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said citywide, 19 people including three children were injured in the capital Monday, a count that centers on the science academy and hospital strikes specifically rather than the full national toll reported by CBS and Al Jazeera.

Andrii Butenko, Ukraine's education and science minister, said in a social media post that "by destroying educational and scientific infrastructure, Russia is attempting to intimidate children, parents, educators, and scientists." Germany's Foreign Ministry, whose embassy sits near the academy, condemned the strike, saying "Russia is once again accepting civilian casualties and injuries, even in the immediate vicinity of our embassy."

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces struck two data centers and gas stations in Kyiv, a Nova Poshta distribution hub in Odesa, and cargo ships in the Black Sea and the port of Chornomorsk, framing the campaign as targeting military-linked and economic infrastructure. That framing does not account for the science academy, a residential building in Kharkiv, or the medical center, all of which Ukrainian officials and Western reporters on the ground documented as hit.

Ukraine says it struck back at Russian defense plants and oil sites

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces hit two "defence plants" in Russia's Tula and Voronezh regions overnight Sunday, along with oil facilities in Krasnodar and drone-related sites in Kaluga and Oryol, according to Euronews and the Times of India. He said Ukrainian forces also struck a target in the Black Sea and worked "directly against the occupying contingent" in Bryansk, where the region's acting governor said three separate strikes derailed nearly 30 railcars on a bridge.

"Every Russian terrorist attack is a loss of life that could have been prevented if pressure on Russia had finally become total," Zelensky wrote on social media, calling on Western allies to intensify pressure on Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday that "Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months," according to CBS News, an apparent reference to Ukrainian strikes carried out during Russia's recent parliamentary elections. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday that "Europe is doing everything it can to thwart peace talks in which the Trump administration is interested," continuing Moscow's push to portray a rift inside NATO.

Separately, a Russian jet-powered drone struck western Ukraine near the Polish border crossing on Monday, prompting Warsaw to issue an air-attack alert and urge residents of the eastern Lublin region to seek shelter, according to the Guardian.

Ukraine's air defense intercepted at least one additional drone aimed at the academy site while rescue crews worked, a Euronews reporter on the ground confirmed. Whether Kyiv can scale up interceptor production fast enough to counter the faster jet-powered drones that increasingly outpace its older air-defense systems remains an open question heading into the winter months. Both sides are trading long-range strikes with no active ceasefire talks underway.