KYIV – A massive Russian missile assault on Ukrainian cities left Kyiv’s historic Dormition Cathedral in flames and claimed 11 lives, whilst Ukrainian drone strikes killed three people in a Russian city south of Moscow.

Russia fired 70 missiles and 611 drones at several major Ukrainian cities overnight, primarily targeting the capital, Ukraine’s air force said on Monday. Ukrainian air defence units intercepted 50 missiles and 582 drones.

AFP journalists across Kyiv witnessed residents running through streets seeking shelter throughout the night as projectiles were intercepted in the sky and glowing debris fell across the city.

The violence killed five people and wounded 25 in the capital as fire broke out on the grounds of the UNESCO world heritage site Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The roof of the Dormition Cathedral was engulfed in flames, with a gaping hole visible on one side of the church.

More than a dozen fire trucks surrounded the cathedral, with firefighters working to extinguish the blaze from inside and from aerial platforms. The fire had been put out by morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“This is one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date,” Zelensky said.

Five rescue workers were killed during firefighting operations in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said. At least nine others were injured in repeated Russian strikes on the city.

One person was killed in the frontline southeastern city of Kherson, whilst two people were injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region and three were wounded in the Sumy region.

The Russian army claimed the Lavra was hit by an outdated US Patriot air defence missile. Russia’s military said it had carried out a “massive strike” on Ukrainian military sites in the capital Kyiv, as well as Kharkiv and Dnipro regions.

A building in the capital’s Mystetsky Arsenal National Art and Museum Complex also caught fire, according to Ukraine’s emergency service.

Head of the local military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, condemned the “direct strike” on the site. Kyiv’s Metropolitan Epiphanius denounced the attack as a “crime against humanity, history and Christianity”.

The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a monastery with emblematic golden domes, made headlines in recent years after the expulsion of its monks, who were accused of having ties with Moscow. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine officially broke away from Russia in 2022, and two years later the Ukrainian government banned the Ukraine branch of the Orthodox Church linked to Moscow.

Ukrainian strikes hit Russian city

A Ukrainian drone strike killed three people and wounded three others in the Russian city of Tula, around 200km south of Moscow, regional governor Dmitry Milyaev said on Monday.

Zelensky called for G7 leaders, meeting for a summit in France, to give a “decisive and substantive” response to the attacks, requesting “more pressure on the aggressor and more support for Ukraine’s air defence, especially anti-ballistic capabilities”.

The G7 summit is set to be dominated by the US-Iranian deal to end the Middle East war.

Both Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin called US President Donald Trump on Sunday to discuss the conflict. Zelensky said on X he had “discussed things that could help bring about peace now”, whilst his adviser Dmytro Lytvyn described a “quite substantive conversation about everything” between the leaders.

The Kremlin said the conversation between Putin and Trump focused on peace negotiations with the United States and Iran. Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov said US presidential special representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “who are currently closely involved in Iranian affairs, will return to Russia soon”.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned into Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, with thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of troops killed. Amid near-daily bombardment of its cities by Russian drones and missiles, Ukraine has in recent weeks stepped up its own aerial attacks, which it says mostly target Russia’s oil infrastructure to reduce profits that fund the war.

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