Russian drones and missiles kill 12 in Kyiv as schools reopen

A night and morning of Russian drones and missiles killed at least 12 people in Kyiv and the surrounding region on 1 September, Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said. Local officials put the wounded at 21. The strikes landed on the day millions of Ukrainian children went back to class, and they stretched more than 12 hours in the capital belt. It was the sixth straight day of attacks on the city.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia fired almost 1,500 drones at Ukraine over four days and that about 800 of them were jet-powered. Those airframes fly faster than the propeller Shaheds that defined earlier years of the war. Ukraine has been using combat aircraft to catch them in daylight, a costly answer to a cheap weapon. The United Nations repeated a call for civilian protection after a weekend in which nearly 60 civilians were killed and more than 200 injured, according to UN tallies cited in the same briefings.

The tactic has changed. For two years the heavy raids arrived at night. Residents learned the rhythm and went to the metro. The new pattern is a near-constant pulse, day and evening included, that keeps air-raid applications open and school administrations guessing. A Kyiv mother, Yulianna Oliynyk, told reporters she was thinking about taking sleeping bags to the metro station near her child's lyceum. That is not colour. It is how the city is absorbing a change in the raid clock.

Odesa took a separate heavy strike in the same window, part of a Black Sea port campaign that has run for months. A Ukrainian missile attack on Belgorod on 30 August killed two people and injured 16, Russian regional officials said. Each capital now publishes the other's civilian count as evidence. The useful military fact is the drone mix. Jet Shaheds reduce the time a ground crew has to acquire and fire. They also force Ukraine to spend fighter hours on targets that used to be the work of mobile guns.

School reopening makes the same raids more expensive in political terms. Parents who accepted night sirens through last winter now have to decide whether a daytime classroom is safer than a basement. Municipalities have been splitting cohorts between in-person days and online days since 2022. The 1 September wave arrived before those rotas could settle.

None of this alters the front line by a village. It alters the air-defence budget and the civilian calendar. Zelensky's 1,500-drone figure over four days is the planning number. If that rate holds, Ukraine will need more interceptors, more aircraft hours, or a change in how cities shelter in daylight. Russia will keep spending cheap airframes to buy that dilemma. The 12 dead in Kyiv on the first school morning of September are the first receipt.