Residents stand in front of their apartment building damaged by a Russian missile strike in the town of Boryspil, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kyiv region on Tuesday, September 1.
Kyiv: An Indian citizen was among 12 people killed in a Russian missile and drone attack across Ukraine, its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday, September 1, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged President Vladimir Putin to move from “endless war towards the end of war.”
Russian forces used a large number of jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles in the overnight strikes, damaging residential and civilian infrastructure across several regions, Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
“Overall, 12 people were killed, including an Indian citizen, and dozens more were wounded as a result of the attack,” he said. He did not identify the Indian national.
Seven people were killed in a strike on a railway depot in Kyiv, with nearly 350 rescuers deployed across the capital and surrounding region. In Boryspil, four people were killed and 13 injured, a five-storey apartment building was damaged and 50 people evacuated.
Strikes using glide bombs and drones also continued in Odesa and its surrounding region, leaving thousands of families without electricity. Zelenskyy said a border checkpoint with Romania and export infrastructure were damaged, and that the Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions also came under fire.
He attributed the scale of casualties to gaps in Ukraine’s air defences and appealed for more anti-ballistic systems. “Russia always calculates its strikes precisely this way, to destroy lives as much as possible, and it succeeds only when air defence resources are insufficient,” he said, thanking countries supporting Ukraine through the PURL initiative and urging allies to step up deliveries.
Around 1,500 drones were launched over four days, more than half of them jet-powered, he said. On August 29, a Russian strike on an ammunition depot near Kyiv killed 38 people and injured 52.
The deaths came a day after Modi met Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, where he pressed for an end to the conflict. “Every day spent on war pushes humanity backwards, whereas every step taken towards peace fills humanity with new hope and enthusiasm,” Modi said, adding that India, “the land of Gandhi and Buddha,” supported all efforts towards peace.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the Prime Minister stressed the importance India attaches to dialogue and diplomacy, and reiterated India’s readiness to do whatever was feasible to help end a conflict exacting a heavy toll globally. Putin is due in India for the BRICS summit on September 12 and 13.
This post was last modified on September 1, 2026 1:19 pm