Russia carried out a combined missile-and-drone attack on Ukraine overnight from 8 to 9 January, hitting Kyiv and striking infrastructure in the west as temperatures dropped and repair crews worked to stabilise power and water systems.
In Kyiv, officials said the assault began shortly before midnight and continued for hours. Residential buildings were damaged on the east bank of the Dnipro and in a central district, with fires reported in multiple parts of the city. Kyiv’s military administration said at least four people were killed and at least 19 injured; among the dead was an emergency medic responding to an earlier incident, while other rescue workers were wounded. The city also reported damage to critical infrastructure, including disruptions to water supplies, and the capital remained under air-raid alert for about five hours.
Alongside the Kyiv strikes, explosions were reported in the Lviv region after a late-night high-speed ballistic missile impact. Ukraine’s Western Air Command said the projectile was travelling at about 13,000 kilometres per hour on a ballistic trajectory, and that the type of missile would be determined after examination of fragments. The strike prompted speculation that Russia may have used an “Oreshnik” intermediate-range system, but Ukrainian officials have said the identification is not yet definitive.
Moscow’s defence ministry said it fired an Oreshnik missile from the Kapustin Yar test range and described the attack as retaliation for an alleged Ukrainian drone attempt to strike a residence associated with President Vladimir Putin, an allegation Kyiv denies. Russia said the missile carried a conventional warhead.
The Lviv target was not fully confirmed in official Ukrainian statements released early on 9 January. Russian statements referred broadly to strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial and energy-related targets, while Ukrainian regional authorities reported damage to infrastructure.
The overnight barrage came as Ukraine sought to restore power and heating after earlier attacks on the electricity system. In the south-east, strikes on energy infrastructure left large parts of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia without electricity. Ukrainian officials said critical facilities switched to reserve power and repair work focused on restoring water and heating services. Separate accounts put the number of affected households at more than one million across the two regions, with a cold snap forecast to deepen the strain on damaged equipment and emergency crews.
Ukrainian officials and analysts have increasingly described a pattern in which Russia concentrates large numbers of drones and missiles against one or two regions over successive days, rather than dispersing attacks nationwide. The approach is intended to overload air defences and force grid operators to re-route electricity between regions while repairs are under way. Ukrainian Air Force summaries of recent raids have repeatedly emphasised the combined use of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in a single strike package.
In the south, Odesa regional authorities reported additional drone strikes on infrastructure during the same period, including damage at an oil facility reported to be empty at the time, with no casualties reported in that incident.
Across the border in Russia, Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a strike on utility infrastructure left about 556,000 people without electricity in six municipalities, with a similar number without heating and around 200,000 without water and sanitation. Russian officials did not report deaths in the incident.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned of the risk of further strikes in the coming days and has continued to press partners for additional air-defence systems, arguing that the winter campaign is aimed at disrupting civilian life and basic services.
The military and diplomatic context is also shifting. Open-source mapping cited in Ukrainian reporting indicated that Russia’s territorial advances slowed in late 2025, with recent weekly gains measured in the tens of square kilometres rather than the larger movements recorded earlier in the autumn. Separately, DeepState’s annual assessment put Russia’s 2025 gains in the low thousands of square kilometres, although figures vary by methodology.
In Washington, attention has been drawn to comments made by President Trump in a published interview in which he suggested the United States might face a choice between pursuing control over Greenland and preserving NATO as it currently operates, while describing US authority as constrained by “morality” rather than international law. European leaders have publicly backed Denmark and Greenland in response to the renewed pressure.
At the same time, US legislators are moving a sanctions package that would widen penalties tied to Russian energy exports. Senator Lindsey Graham said President Trump had agreed to let the bipartisan bill advance, with a Senate vote possible in the coming days.
