Power outages have returned to Kyiv after Russian attacks damaged the energy infrastructure supplying the capital, with authorities warning that the situation could worsen as Russia intensifies its campaign against Ukraine’s energy system ahead of winter.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s power, heating, and other critical infrastructure to disrupt the systems civilians depend on and create a humanitarian crisis during winter. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned that this winter will be especially severe, as Russia has expanded its strike capabilities since the summer and Ukraine continues to face shortages of air-defense systems needed to protect its energy infrastructure.

Ukrenergo said on 8 October that emergency outages were being imposed in parts of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast because of falling voltage in the high-voltage network. Previously announced hourly schedules were suspended, with predictable schedules to resume once the system stabilizes.

In the evening, further disruption came after a Russian attack on an energy facility important to Kyiv. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that energy workers were working to restore power.

Kyiv has been under Russian attack throughout the day, with four people killed and 19 injured.

The attack continues into the evening of 8 October, with air raid alerts active across most of the country.

Kyiv loses power, water, and public transport

The damage throughout the day quickly spread beyond electricity.

The Kyiv City Military Administration said power disruptions temporarily halted metro trains and escalators. Part of the capital’s public transport system was also suspended because of the lack of electricity.

Reduced power to water infrastructure caused lower pressure on the right bank of the Dnipro, particularly in the Holosiivskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Solomianskyi, and Shevchenkivskyi districts. Some buildings could temporarily lose water, the administration warned.

Russia is hitting the energy system as winter approaches

The outages come as Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the heating season.

Ukrenergo said Russian attacks had caused new power outages in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The company said damaged equipment was already limiting the grid’s ability to supply consumers and warned that further Russian strikes could rapidly change the situation.

For 9 October, Ukrenergo announced all-day power restrictions in affected regions, including hourly outages for some consumers. Industrial and business consumers will also face restrictions. The company urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity, particularly during the evening peak from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Ukraine’s energy authorities have been warning about the consequences of repeated Russian attacks for months. In late September, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said attacks on energy facilities had been occurring almost daily since the summer, with the September 29–30 attack marking the first massive combined strike on the energy system since the previous heating season.

The renewed strikes mark the beginning of Russia’s winter campaign against the energy system, with Russian missiles and drones increasingly targeting power-generation and transmission infrastructure in Kyiv and surrounding regions.

Russia has openly threatened another winter of blackouts

The campaign follows years of Russian attacks aimed at disrupting the infrastructure that keeps Ukrainian homes heated and supplied with electricity and water during the winter.

In August, Russia’s Defense Ministry openly taunted Ukrainians over its attacks on energy-related infrastructure, posting images of attack drones with the message that Ukrainians would “get a freeze” in winter. 

Russia’s strategy has repeatedly linked attacks on electricity infrastructure to disruptions in heating and water supplies. This makes damage to the power grid particularly consequential as temperatures fall: a strike on an electrical facility can leave not only homes without lights, but also affect water pumps, heating systems, transportation, and other essential services.

The return of blackouts to Kyiv before the heating season is fully underway is an early indication of the pressure Russia’s renewed energy campaign is putting on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/2108182631217074459/

A Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Pryluky, a town in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv Oblast, killed 22 people on 7 October, regional police reported on the morning of 8 October. Five of the dead were children: three one-year-old boys, an eight-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old girl, police said.

Russian strikes on Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, and Kyiv killed 28 people on 7 October, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. For the town, it was the second deadly missile strike since May. Behind the toll are families like this one: three generations hit by a single strike.

A family visit that ended under rubble

Three-year-old Zlatoslava is now in the Chernihiv Oblast children's hospital, Pryluky district police chief Vladyslav Stoianov told. Her mother, Kateryna, is hospitalized too. The two had come on the evening of 6 October to visit Kateryna's sister, police officer Yuliia Malysh. The girl's father stayed home in Lynovytsia, a village 15 km away.

Yuliia was wounded and is in hospital, Stoianov said. Her husband, Oleh Malysh, was killed. Until recently, Oleh had fought at the front in the Chernihiv Oblast police rifle battalion. The sisters' mother, Liudmyla, had also come over that evening, and she died too. All the family details come from Stoianov, who was describing a colleague's family.

Footage of an emergency worker carrying a little girl from the ruins reached almost all media, Vyhivskyi wrote in the same post. Suspilne first reported that the filmed rescuer had carried Zlatoslava. It then corrected itself: he had carried a different child, five-year-old Zoriana. Vyhivskyi also gives the girl's age as five, and he named the rescuer as State Emergency Service section commander Pavlo Levchenko. With colleagues, Levchenko freed the girl and her mother after the blast threw them out of the building.

A Ukrainian Sargan-3000 sea drone shot down a Russian Shahed flying on a mesh radio network, Ukraine's Navy reported on 7 October. Ukrainian sea drones have downed Russian aircraft before, but with missiles. This one used a machine gun.

Russia has been hitting Odesa with air attacks that come in waves with short gaps between them. Guarding the sky over water is harder than over land. Since fall 2025, Russia has also used mesh radio networks to reroute Shaheds mid-flight and dodge Ukrainian air defenses. That leaves Ukraine needing more ways to meet these drones out at sea, before they reach its ports and coast.

A Shahed steered by radio

A mesh-network drone passes its control signals along a chain of radio relays, drone to drone and on to ground antennas. That lets a Russian operator steer it in flight.

In May, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, then a Defense Ministry adviser, said only about 5% of Shaheds had got through in a recent Russian strike, and predicted that Russia would answer with jet-powered versions and strikes near the border. By July, Ukraine was testing jamming against mesh-controlled jet Shaheds, he said.

The Sargan-3000 fired its Protector remote weapon station, Militarnyi reported. The station is a remotely operated 12.7-mm (50-caliber) machine gun with electro-optical sights. The outlet added that the Sargan-3000 is designed for combat missions far from Ukraine's coast.

Built for the open sea

Ukraine's Navy took the Sargan-3000 into service in April 2026, according to Militarnyi. The drone boat has a combat radius of up to 1,600 km. It moves at 40–55 knots and carries up to 450 kg of payload.

In September, a Sargan-3000 sank a Russian uncrewed boat with machine-gun fire. Militarnyi called it the first battle between uncrewed sea platforms in history. Analyst H.I. Sutton wrote that the boat carried a Protector made by Norway's Kongsberg. That is the same weapon station named in the October shootdown. Sutton added that Russian attack sea drones work closely with Shaheds, which can relay the boats' mesh radio signals.

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv overnight on 7 October destroyed warehouse premises in the Podil district and badly damaged a book warehouse of Ukrainian publishing house Knyholav, the publisher said. Tens of thousands of books were lost, but no staff were hurt. It was the second time this year that Russia has destroyed Knyholav's stock.

Russia has destroyed Ukrainian books since the start of its invasion, seizing them from libraries in occupied areas and burning them in boiler houses. Since spring, it has also been aiming missiles and drones at the industry that makes them—printing houses, publishers' warehouses, and bookshops—destroying books by the millions. Each strike takes out not only stock but the reprints, new titles, and textbooks Ukrainian readers were waiting for, at a time when publishing in Ukrainian is part of how the country holds onto its identity.

Tens of thousands of books lost

The publisher can't yet say how many books were destroyed or can no longer be saved, it said, but tens of thousands were lost. The final count will be possible only once staff get full access to the warehouse and check the state of every book.

The losses include new titles Knyholav received over the past two months. They also include reprints of books Russia had destroyed in July at its previous warehouse. Knyholav had moved its rebuilt stock to this new warehouse after a Russian strike on 19 July destroyed its previous one outside Kyiv, along with about 250,000 books.

"This is a tangible blow for us. These are books we created, printed, and prepared for you," the publisher wrote. "But despite everything, we are holding on!"

The strike hit Kyiv's Podilskyi district, where a Russian attack caused a fire and the partial collapse of the floors of an office and warehouse building, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The same overnight attack killed people in Pryluky, Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia.

Millions of books burned

Russia's attacks destroyed more than 1.5 million books in July alone, Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna said. On 1 August, a strike on the logistics center of publisher Ranok and the distribution center of the KnyhoLand bookshop chain in Kharkiv destroyed 8 million books, including 628,000 new school textbooks. Over three months, Russia burned about 13 million Ukrainian books, nearly a third of everything the country printed in 2025. In August, Russian missiles also hit Kyiv's largest book market.

NATO's Military Committee, the Alliance's highest military body, visited Kyiv on 6 October to reaffirm support for Ukraine, its chair, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, said. It was the committee's first official visit to Ukraine's capital in eight years. The officers came to hear how Ukraine is fighting Russia and to draw lessons for NATO's own defense, and Dragone used the visit to warn Moscow.

Russia's war no longer stays inside Ukraine: its drones, saboteurs, and pressure campaigns increasingly reach NATO members. That turns Ukraine, the only European army facing Russia in combat, from a country the Alliance helps into one it learns from.

All 32 allies at the table

Dragone brought the military representatives of all 32 member states to hear the latest battlefield assessment directly from Ukraine's commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, and his staff. They also came to learn what more NATO can do to support Ukraine, he said in an address recorded in Kyiv.

"After eight years, the NATO Military Committee comes back to Kyiv for an official visit. But while we were not physically present here, Ukraine is in our thoughts, in our discussions, in our decisions and following action every single day," Dragone said.

The visit fulfilled a promise he made to Drapatyi during their last conversation in August, the admiral said. It also follows a June visit to Kyiv by the North Atlantic Council, NATO's main political decision-making body. "We are here in full strength with a clear message. The bond between NATO and Ukraine is stronger and stronger," he said.

With the whole NATO Military Committee, we visited Kyiv, yesterday, to reaffirm unwavering support for #Ukraine.

Discussions with Major General Drapatyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, focussed on Ukraine’s military priorities and lessons learned to strengthen… pic.twitter.com/kar2l1Xlq4

— Admiral Giuseppe CAVO DRAGONE - NATO CMC (@CMC_NATO) October 7, 2026

Lessons from Ukraine's commanders

The talks with Drapatyi focused on Ukraine's military priorities and lessons learned to strengthen Allied preparedness for current and future threats, Dragone wrote on X. The delegation also paid respects at the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine in Kyiv.

In his address, Dragone said Ukraine's courageous and resilient spirit remains unbreakable and serves as an example to other nations.

"An example that combines with all the lessons we can learn from your commanders, from their experience, which will ultimately help our Alliance too to better face today's and tomorrow's threats," he said.

To Russia: "You are failing"

Dragone also addressed Russia directly. NATO stands unwavering with Ukraine in the face of Russia's continued aggression and its reckless hybrid activities in member countries, he said.

"To those who think that by perpetrating acts of sabotage, cyberattacks, and violation of the airspace in national NATO territory they will undermine this support and our resolve, I will respond: You are failing. NATO support for Ukraine continues to grow, and our unity is stronger than ever."

Russia bears full responsibility for such dangerous and unacceptable behavior, and allies will keep sharpening their tools and strengthening deterrence and defense, the admiral added.

Drapatyi became Ukraine's commander-in-chief in July, when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced Oleksandr Syrskyi after a week of political turmoil.

Kyiv under fire, Russian troops pushed back near Lyman

The day after the visit, Russia struck Kyiv and 12 oblasts with about 70 missiles. In recent weeks, Russian attacks have cratered the capital's bridges and hit a school, a café, and warehouses, as well as a maternity hospital. Ukrainian troops also retook ground near Lyman in the Vivaldi counteroffensive.

Russia attacked Kyiv and 12 oblasts overnight on 7 October with about 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, as well as Shahed drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The strikes killed at least 20 people, with the deadliest hit on an apartment block in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. Russia also hit Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia, while Poland scrambled its jets.

Moscow has likely begun its winter strike campaign earlier than usual, aiming to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable, and UN figures already show civilian casualties running 55% above last year's.

Update: Pryluky death toll rises to 14, including four children

The death toll from the Russian strike on Pryluky has risen to 14, including four children, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said on the afternoon of 7 October. Fifty people were injured, seven of them children, and rescuers pulled 15 people from the rubble, including a child.

Russia attacked Pryluky with cruise missiles, and one scored a direct hit on the five-story apartment building, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. Earlier in the day, he reported that 27 of the injured had been hospitalized, three in serious condition. The search-and-rescue operation was still under way.

Morning repoting: five dead in Pryluky

A Russian missile struck a five-story apartment building in Pryluky early in the morning, while residents were still asleep, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. The strike completely destroyed one sectkion of the building, killing five people and injuring 26, including five children, Ukraine's National Police reported. Rescuers pulled three people from the rubble, including a child, and more people may still be trapped, Chaus said.

"Today, for Putin's birthday, the Russian army 'gave' him the destruction of an apartment building in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. It was an ordinary five-story building," Zelenskyy said.

Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia

In Kyiv, Russian missiles hit non-residential buildings and warehouses in the Obolonskyi and Podilskyi districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Strikes also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district, and debris burned in the Darnytskyi district, he added. In the Darnytskyi district, a missile set fire to a garage cooperative, where firefighters rescued two people and found two men dead, Klitschko wrote. Police and rescuers worked to defuse an unexploded ballistic missile that fell among apartment blocks in the same district, the National Police said.

In Kremenchuk, Russian missiles hit a densely populated residential area, killing two people and injuring seven, Poltava Oblast head Vitalii Diakivnych said. Zelenskyy later put the number of injured at eight and said four high-rises were damaged.

In Oleksandriia in Kirovohrad Oblast, Russia hit an enterprise. One person was killed, three injured, and two were out of contact, Kirovohrad Oblast head Andrii Raikovych said. Zelenskyy later put the death toll there at two.

Drones and other targets

In Dnipro, Russian strikes damaged an industrial enterprise, apartment buildings, and a sports club, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. In Nikopol district, the attacks injured a 65-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Russia also struck Lozova in Kharkiv Oblast with a missile, and a drone hit an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, police said.

In Zaporizhzhia, Russia attacked a transport infrastructure facility, acting oblast head Mykhailo Semikin said, a day after a strike on one of the city's bridges over the Dnipro halted traffic. In Kyiv Oblast, three production and warehouse buildings were damaged in Obukhiv district, with no casualties, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said.

Air defense downed five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles, and 117 drones, while missiles and drones hit 18 locations, the Air Force said. Polish military aircraft took off and Poland put its ground-based air defense on alert during the attack, Poland's Operational Command said.

Russian ballistic missiles remain the biggest challenge, Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine is searching daily for Patriot missiles.

Strikes across the front over the past day

Russian attacks killed one person and injured 11 in Kherson Oblast over the past day, the Kherson Oblast Military Administration reported. Russia injured 12 people in Donetsk Oblast on 6 October, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Two people were injured in Kharkiv Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said.

Bridges and a maternity hospital in Russia's sights

Russia has stepped up strikes on Kyiv's bridges and has now extended them to Zaporizhzhia. In September, a Russian ballistic and hypersonic missile attack on Kyiv damaged a maternity hospital.

Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight into 7 October, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 30. Kyiv, Pryluky, Kremenchuk and several other cities were struck as Moscow used ballistic and cruise missiles alongside 130 attack drones, with energy infrastructure among the principal targets.

Russia fired 70 missiles and 130 drones at Ukraine during one of the largest combined aerial attacks of recent months, striking Kyiv and at least a dozen regions between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 11 people had been killed and 34 wounded in the attacks. He said energy infrastructure was among Russia’s principal targets and described ballistic missiles as the most difficult element of the assault for Ukrainian air defences. Reuters reported the remarks and casualty figures.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force’s preliminary assessment, the attack began at about 6pm on 6 October and involved a mixture of ballistic, anti-ship and cruise missiles launched from Russian territory, aircraft and the Caspian Sea. Russia also deployed 130 Shahed-type, Gerbera and decoy drones, including 46 jet-powered attack drones.

By 9am, Ukrainian forces said they had destroyed or electronically suppressed 161 aerial targets: 117 drones, 39 cruise missiles and five ballistic or other high-speed missiles. Six additional cruise missiles were still being assessed. Missile and drone impacts were recorded at 18 locations, while debris from intercepted weapons fell at another five.

The main directions of attack were the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Residential buildings hit in Pryluky and Kyiv

Some of the heaviest civilian casualties were reported in Pryluky, in Chernihiv region, where a missile struck a multi-storey residential building. Emergency officials initially reported four people killed and 20 injured, including three children. Rescue teams continued searching the damaged structure on Wednesday morning. Associated Press reported on the rescue operation and casualties.

In Kyiv, ballistic missiles reached the capital during the night, with explosions reported shortly after 3am. Two people were killed. A non-residential building in the Podilskyi district was hit and caught fire, while garages burned in Darnytskyi district. The wider Kyiv region was simultaneously attacked by missiles and drones, damaging three production and warehouse facilities in the Obukhiv district.

Two people were also killed and seven wounded in Kremenchuk, in Poltava region, where missiles and drones struck the city and surrounding district. Damage was reported to residential buildings and an industrial facility. Further strikes were recorded in Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Oleksandriia.

Zelenskyy said Russia had deliberately sought to inflict serious damage on Ukraine’s energy system. “One of the key targets was our energy infrastructure,” he said, adding that further air-defence supplies had become an immediate requirement.

The attack came only hours after the Ukrainian president said intelligence services had obtained information indicating that Russia was preparing another major aerial operation. In his address on Tuesday evening, he urged Ukrainians to respond to air-raid warnings and said the country’s ability to withstand the expected attack would depend partly on the availability of Western-supplied defensive systems. His latest statements are available through the official presidential website.

The scale and composition of Wednesday’s barrage again exposed the pressure being placed on Ukraine’s layered air-defence network. EU Today has previously examined the shortage of Patriot interceptors capable of engaging ballistic missiles, which travel considerably faster than cruise missiles and drones and leave defence crews much less time to respond.

Russia’s use of different weapons within the same attack also forces Ukraine to employ several types of interception simultaneously. Cheap drones can be engaged by mobile fire groups, electronic warfare and interceptor drones, while ballistic missiles generally require more sophisticated systems such as Patriot.

Moscow’s Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” using long-range precision weapons and drones against Ukrainian military-industrial facilities. It claimed that missile and drone production and storage sites, as well as port and ship-repair infrastructure, had been targeted. Those claims could not independently establish the nature of individual sites hit. Ukrainian authorities meanwhile documented damage to homes, businesses, energy facilities and other civilian infrastructure.

The overnight assault follows several weeks of intensified strikes as Ukraine approaches another winter under pressure on its power network. During German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Kyiv at the weekend, Berlin announced a new assistance package of more than €1.3 billion, including military support and funding intended to help protect and repair the country’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter.

Wednesday’s attack demonstrated why those two areas — air defence and the resilience of the electricity system — have become increasingly closely connected. Even with more than 160 incoming weapons intercepted or suppressed, missiles and drones reached targets across several regions, leaving casualties and damage hundreds of kilometres apart.

Russia keeps upgrading its jet-powered drones, and Ukraine's electronic warfare is racing to keep up. Kyiv has set extra tasks for its military and manufacturers to scale up the most effective electronic warfare approaches, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff on electronic warfare and infrastructure protection.

Russia keeps modifying its jet-powered Shaheds to beat each new Ukrainian defense, and Ukraine's answers have to keep pace. The race is tight: from 1 to 26 September, air defenses downed only 55 percent of the 2,730 new jet-powered drones, against 90% of the slower ones.

Hidden relays blunt Kyiv's jammers

Jamming has to improve because Russia keeps finding new ways around it. On 3 October, presidential adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said someone had installed Russian MESH radio repeaters in Kyiv, a short control channel that guides Shahed drones onto their targets. As long as they are there, he said, closing the city with electronic warfare will not be effective.

"As long as online control of drones exists, not only the bridges but the air defense assets will be under threat," Flash stressed.

Sanctions aim at the supply chain

Beyond the jamming task, the Staff turned to where Russia gets the parts for those drones. Defense Intelligence reported on Russia's technological priorities for this year and next, and on supplies of critical components and equipment for its weapons production, Zelenskyy said.

New sanctions packages will follow, with Defense Intelligence due to send proposals to the Ukrainian government and the National Security and Defense Council, and Ukraine is working to align its sanctions with partners' jurisdictions.

The Staff also set the main tasks for supplying Ukrainian forces with long-range drones next year.

"The main criterion is that we must be able to respond in kind to Russian strikes," Zelenskyy emphasized.

Those parts, and the drones built from them, keep changing

In August, Intelligence Deputy Chief Vadym Skibitskyi said Russia remained fully dependent on Chinese turbojets for the Geran-4 and Geran-5, each costing about $35,000 to $40,000.

However, two months later, Ukraine reported the Geran-4 had received a locally built engine and a new optical navigation system. Kyiv has to stay attuned to changes to keep pace with the technology race, and so far, it is still trying to catch up rather than get ahead.

Moscow has again told foreign diplomats to leave Kyiv before further Russian strikes. The embassies have stayed. The episode exposes a broader Russian objective: turning military pressure on Ukraine’s capital into political and diplomatic retreat by its Western partners.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry renewed its warning to foreign diplomats and other foreign nationals on 3 October, urging them to leave Kyiv and saying Russian forces would continue large-scale strikes against targets in the Ukrainian capital and elsewhere. The warning said those who remained were exposing themselves to “mortal danger”, while Moscow sought to place responsibility for any consequences on the individuals and governments choosing to remain.

The military threat behind that warning is not theoretical. Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv have intensified, striking transport infrastructure, energy facilities and residential districts. EU Today has documented a succession of such attacks, including a September missile and drone barrage that killed three people and damaged residential and public buildings and a later jet-powered drone strike on the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv. Air alerts and attacks on the capital are now a routine part of the security environment in which foreign missions operate.

The significance of Moscow’s latest statement, however, goes beyond the question of physical safety. By telling foreign governments that their diplomats should leave and suggesting that those who stay must accept the consequences, Russia is attempting to change the political calculation surrounding Kyiv. If Western states began moving their embassies to Lviv or across the border into Poland, Moscow would have achieved something that continued military pressure has so far failed to deliver: a visible reduction in the international diplomatic presence in the Ukrainian capital.

That has not happened. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry says it has received no request or notification from a foreign diplomatic mission indicating that it intends to relocate. Reports that some Western governments have considered contingency arrangements appear to concern emergency planning rather than decisions to withdraw, which is hardly surprising for embassies operating in a capital subjected to repeated missile and drone attacks. The distinction is important because preparing evacuation options is standard risk management; implementing them would be a political signal.

The European Union has gone further than simply denying evacuation plans. EU Ambassador Katarína Mathernová said that the EU Delegation, the EU Advisory Mission and all 25 EU member states maintaining embassies in Kyiv would remain in the capital. Her response was deliberately public, making clear that the Russian warning would not alter the diplomatic footprint of the EU or its member states in Ukraine.

Moscow has tried this before. In May, Russia issued a similar warning to diplomats and foreign nationals, prompting Brussels to summon the Russian chargé d’affaires. EU Today reported at the time that European officials viewed the warning as a threat against the foreign diplomatic community in Kyiv. Mathernová subsequently said that the EU would remain in Kyiv despite Russia’s renewed warnings, describing the pressure as an attempt to generate fear and isolate Ukraine.

The October warning has produced much the same result. One day later, Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled to Kyiv, accompanied by Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and a German business delegation. His arrival was particularly difficult to reconcile with suggestions that European governments were preparing to abandon the capital. EU Today reported that the visit brought more than €1.3 billion in new German defence and energy commitments, while the German government presented the trip as a demonstration of continuing support for Ukraine.

Washington has taken a similar position. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would make its own assessment of whether it was safe for American diplomats to remain in Kyiv and noted that Russia had been issuing such warnings for months. The US embassy has continued operating, while the State Department has maintained its highest-level travel warning for American citizens because of the continuing war. That distinction — between advising private citizens not to travel and maintaining an official diplomatic presence — reflects the different responsibilities involved.

There is also a legal dimension to Moscow’s attempt to shift responsibility. Russian statements create the impression that once diplomats have been warned, the consequences of any subsequent attack fall on those who chose to stay. International law does not support such an interpretation. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations establishes the inviolability of diplomatic premises and personnel, although the immediate obligation to protect foreign missions rests principally with Ukraine as the receiving state.

Russia’s conduct of military operations is governed primarily by international humanitarian law. Diplomats remain civilians, while diplomatic buildings remain civilian objects unless they are being used in circumstances that would make them military objectives. Warnings can form part of an attacker’s obligation to take precautions, but they do not transfer legal responsibility to civilians who remain in place. The International Committee of the Red Cross makes clear that civilians who stay after an advance warning continue to enjoy protection, and an attacking force must still comply with the rules of distinction, proportionality and precautions.

That legal point is relevant because the wording used by Moscow appears designed to establish a different political narrative. Russia can warn foreign governments that further strikes are coming, but such warnings cannot provide advance immunity for the way those attacks are conducted. Nor do they relieve Russia of responsibility if attacks unlawfully damage civilian or diplomatic property.

The continued presence of embassies in Kyiv also has practical significance for Ukraine. Foreign missions give governments direct access to Ukrainian institutions and their own assessment of political, military and economic conditions on the ground. Their diplomats meet ministers, military officials, civil society representatives and businesses, reducing governments’ dependence on second-hand reporting and allowing them to judge developments for themselves.

Relocating those missions would therefore have consequences beyond symbolism. Diplomatic relations could continue from Lviv, Warsaw or elsewhere, but Moscow would inevitably portray any large-scale withdrawal from Kyiv as evidence that foreign governments no longer regarded the Ukrainian capital as sustainable as a diplomatic centre. That helps explain why European governments have answered the latest warning so publicly and why maintaining a visible presence has itself become part of the political response.

Russia has increasingly sought to combine physical attacks with wider political effects. Its missile and drone campaign places pressure on Ukraine’s electricity system, transport network, air defences and civilian population. The warnings to foreign missions extend the same logic to Ukraine’s international relationships: increase the perceived cost of remaining in Kyiv and encourage foreign governments to reduce their presence.

So far, that strategy has not produced the intended result. The EU says all of its embassies are staying, Germany’s Chancellor travelled to Kyiv immediately after the warning and Washington has made clear that it will take its own decisions about the security of its mission. Russia can make the Ukrainian capital more dangerous, but it has not persuaded Ukraine’s principal partners to treat Kyiv as a city they must leave.

At least six people were wounded as explosions erupted after a fire broke out in Myla.

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