Russia strikes Kyiv's Academy of Sciences; jet drones pose growing threat

On Monday morning, a fast-moving drone struck the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv, slamming into the historic building at a steep angle and detonating in a burst of orange flame. Video footage captured the moment: people leaning from windows as smoke billowed into clear sky. When the rubble was cleared, at least two bodies had been recovered. One of the dead was an assistant to Volodymyr Horbulin, a former secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, who was working inside the academy when the strike came. Horbulin himself sustained minor injuries.

The attack was one of several that raked across Kyiv in the early hours of Tuesday. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that missile debris had fallen in one courtyard while fires broke out elsewhere in the city. The academy, situated near the German Embassy, a cathedral, the national opera, and government buildings, issued a statement calling the strike "Russian terror" and "barbarity" aimed at people simply doing their jobs. Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russia of deliberate cynicism—targeting a scientific institution during working hours—and said Moscow was "deliberately expanding the boundaries of what it believes the world will tolerate."

The strike on the academy was part of a much wider assault. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Russian forces also hit a medical facility in Kyiv on the same day. Across Ukraine, at least nine people were killed in drone strikes on Monday, with more than 80 wounded. In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a drone attack on a business centre killed three and wounded 19. Another person died in a logistics office in Synelnykove. In Zaporizhzhia, an infrastructure strike wounded 32. Beyond Kyiv, Russian missiles targeted pharmaceutical companies, petrol stations, and communications infrastructure—part of what Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull described as "a rolling series of strikes that have been ongoing for six days now," occurring both day and night.

What distinguishes this phase of the war is the weapon itself. Russia has begun deploying jet-powered drones—faster, higher-flying machines fundamentally different from the propeller-driven variants that dominated earlier strikes. On Monday alone, 90 of the 120 drones fired at Ukraine were jet-propelled. Ukraine's air defences managed to intercept only 57 percent of this new type. Zelenskyy acknowledged the difficulty in his nightly address, saying Ukraine was "still having difficulty countering" the faster machines. He noted that new interceptors were being tested and that some combat groups were already using them, but "some details still need to be refined to achieve enough effectiveness and scale."

The strategic logic behind the attacks is becoming clearer. Russia is systematically targeting Ukraine's economic and communications infrastructure. Data centres are being hit with increasing frequency. On Sunday, Kyiv Star—the country's largest mobile provider—was struck, followed by Vodafone Ukraine, the second largest. The government is reportedly preparing for the possibility of a total communications blackout. Hull observed that these strikes have brought Kyiv "firmly into the eye of this war," transforming the capital from a place where civilians could maintain some distance from the fighting into a direct target of Russian strategy.

Ukraine has responded by escalating its own attacks on Russian territory. Zelenskyy reported that Ukrainian forces struck oil facilities in the Krasnodar region and two defence plants, attempting to undermine Moscow's economic capacity to sustain the war effort. Both Russia and Ukraine have denied deliberately targeting civilians, even as the evidence of civilian casualties and civilian infrastructure damage accumulates across the country. The question now is whether Ukraine's air defences can adapt quickly enough to the new drone technology, and whether the country's communications systems can survive the sustained assault.