Kyiv gas station drone strike kills 2, mayor says

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said an early morning Russian drone strike on a petrol station in the Ukrainian capital killed two people and hospitalised four on Friday.

“There are now two killed in the morning attack on the Kyiv gas station,” Klitschko said on social media.

Emergency services posted footage of a burnt-out forecourt still smoking after the drone attack. Ukrainian oil company Ukrnafta said two of its petrol stations were hit simultaneously Friday morning.

Ukrnafta CEO Bogdan Kukura called the attacks a deliberate strike on civilian facilities that provide fuel and essential goods. He said there was “no military objective” in such attacks and described them as terror against civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s drone attacks were “becoming increasingly terrorist in nature” and said Kyiv needed to scale up countermeasures. Russia made no public comment on the strike, but denies targeting civilians.

The strikes followed weeks of Russian attacks on Kyiv using faster, jet-powered drones, including against logistics centres, warehouses and commercial supply chains. The drones can travel at up to 600 kilometres per hour and are harder for Ukrainian air defences to intercept.

Igor Koziy, a military expert at the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, told local television that the purpose of such strikes was to paralyse economic activity and make deliveries difficult.