A Russian drone hits a Kyiv school as Moscow presses its aerial campaign
against Ukraine
[October 02, 2026]
By SUSIE BLANN and BARRY HATTON
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on
Thursday, city officials said, as the Ukrainian capital endured another
day of relentless aerial attacks.
Children and staff at the school were in shelters when the drone hit,
Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said, and its warhead didn’t explode. No
casualties were reported, but the building’s brick facade showed a large
hole, revealing a staircase, and burn marks alongside smashed windows.
Kyiv has felt like a city under siege in recent weeks, with repeated air
raid alerts, punctuated by loud explosions from drone and missile
strikes. The onslaught aims to terrorize civilians, officials and
analysts say, and break their will to resist 4½ years after Russia’s
full-scale invasion.
The strain is showing. Maryna Lystopad, 35, said her hair has started
falling out due to the stress from escalating attacks and never knowing
where the next attack will hit.
"It’s really horrible. I can’t take it anymore. I think, I think that
soon we’re all going to leave. I’m really not doing well,” she told The
Associated Press. “I’m constantly anxious. I can’t relax. I keep
thinking that if something happens, if something hits, one of my
relatives could be killed.”
Lystopad said she recently had to travel to another part of Kyiv and had
been “genuinely stressed" the whole way there.
“I kept checking, like, whether anything was flying in, where it was
going, where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to run?” she said.
Ukraine's air defenses are stretched
The front line in eastern and southern Ukraine hasn’t seen major shifts
since last year, but the country is struggling to fend off Russia’s
intensified aerial attacks on cities that include ballistic missiles and
high-flying jet-powered drones.
Reflecting the urgency of Ukraine’s plight, President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said he held a conference call Thursday with senior military
and government officials in charge of protecting infrastructure, as some
areas fall behind on implementing previously agreed measures.
He said the Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry will review agreements
Ukraine has made with partner countries on supplying ammunition for air
defenses and F-16 fighter jets, with an updated schedule of deliveries
to be presented within 24 hours.
“It is important that we have additional missiles in October,” Zelenskyy
said on social media.
In response to Russia's attacks, Ukraine has fired its long-range drones
at manufacturing plants deep inside Russia and has targeted Russia’s
drone launch sites. Zelenskyy said Thursday that Kyiv’s forces struck a
site in Russia’s southwestern Oryol region that is used to store and
launch attack drones.
Ukraine also has repeatedly attacked Russia's oil refineries from Moscow
to Siberia, sparking a widespread fuel crisis. President Vladimir Putin
said in a rare admission Thursday that because of these strikes,
“according to our estimates, we lost around 1%" of gross domestic
product.
“They started attacking oil refineries and openly declared the goal of
damaging our economy. Did they achieve their goal? Partially,” Putin
said at a meeting of the Valdai Club forum of international foreign
policy experts.
Separately, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had deployed its domestically
developed short-range FP-7 ballistic missile in combat for the first
time, without elaborating on when or where the mission took place.
Accompanying the post was an image of a missile being launched, and he
said the next stage would be to scale up production. The Associated
Press was not able to verify the claim independently.
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Police officers look at a school damaged by a Russian drone strike
in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy
Maloletka)
To turn the tide, Ukraine needs U.S.-made Patriot missiles that can
effectively defend against ballistic missiles, but they are in short
supply since the Iran war began. A plan to produce them inside Ukraine
could take years to bear fruit.
Kyiv is racing to produce interceptors that can bring down fast-moving
jet-propelled drones as the swift cycle of military innovation during
the war continues.
Sanctions are key to stopping Russia, Ukraine says
Ukraine wants tougher sanctions imposed on Russia to prevent it from
getting key high-tech components for its arsenal.
Britain on Thursday imposed sanctions on 31 Russian individuals,
entities and ships it says are linked to disinformation, attempts to
avoid energy sanctions and the mistreatment of Ukrainian civilians in
areas seized in the war by Russia.
Moscow, meanwhile, is pressing its advantage before Ukraine comes up
with an answer to the latest challenges.
Two Russian drones hit an important bridge across the Dnipro River in
Kyiv on Thursday, Klitschko said, with traffic suspended until a safety
inspection could be done.
Also, the Parkovyi data center in Kyiv, which provides cloud services
and server hosting, was critically damaged and has stopped operating
following repeated Russian strikes, the company said. Client data has
been moved to backup sites in the European Union, it said on Facebook.
Russia steps up a campaign against Ukraine's power grid
Ukrainian officials didn’t report any energy infrastructure being hit
Thursday, a day after what officials said was the biggest Russian attack
on the power grid since spring.
Wednesday's barrage marked “the beginning of Russia’s strike campaign
aimed at degrading Ukraine’s energy security ahead of winter … and
forcing Ukraine to capitulate,” said the Institute for the Study of War,
a Washington-based think tank.
Russia is expected to step up attacks on the electricity supply as the
weather gets colder. It was 19 degrees Celsius (66 F) in Kyiv on
Thursday, and mild temperatures were set to continue.
In a surprise development, Russia for the first time on Wednesday used a
jet-powered drone fitted with a warhead designed to sever high-voltage
pylons, said Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelenskyy on defense
technology.
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AP reporter Volodymr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed.
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