Last night, Ukraine faced one of the largest combined missile and drone assaults since the full-scale invasion began.
From Kyiv to Dnipro, the sky pulsed with incoming threats, the kind of night that turns the air itself into a battlefield.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, radar and radio-technical units tracked a staggering 503 aerial threats in total: 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic, and 458 UAVs of various types, around 300 Shaheds among them.
By morning, air-defence teams had neutralised or destroyed 415 targets:
- 406 strike UAVs (Shaheds, “Gerbera” and other variants)
- 9 missiles of mixed types
Even with that extraordinary success rate, 26 missile impacts and 52 confirmed drone strikes hit 25 locations across Ukraine. Debris from downed targets rained across four regions, igniting fires and damaging residential buildings.
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In Dnipro — The human cost
The most severe blow came here in Dnipro, where a missile tore through an apartment block shortly before 2 a.m. Entire floors collapsed, windows shattered for blocks around, and residents stumbled out in pyjamas into the cold night air.
Rescue workers clawed through debris until dawn. As of 10:00 a.m., officials confirmed at least 12 dead and more than 35 injured, though the number is expected to rise as emergency services continue to search the ruins. Among the injured are several children and an elderly couple who had been sheltering in their corridor when the blast hit.
Under attack, Russia take out civilians in an apartment block. https://t.co/zcGCpQlnPj
— Shaun Pinner (@olddog100ua) November 7, 2025
The scene is one of familiar heartbreak, twisted metal, burning insulation, and the eerie silence after the sirens fade. The video accompanying this piece captures that moment: the sky flaring with incoming fire, then the dull thud that rips a city awake.
A Strategy of saturation
What happened overnight wasn’t random. It was a calculated saturation strike, a clear sign that Russia is ramping up both scale and complexity. The use of hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles in a single coordinated wave is designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences, to make them choose which lives, which cities, which substations to save.
Ukraine’s ability to shoot down over 80% of all inbound threats remains a testament to its defence network and Western-supplied systems. But no system is perfect, and saturation means the ones that get through are hitting civilian homes, not hardened targets.
Last night we were hit.
I’d been saying for a while that an attack on Dnipro City, where I live, was imminent. Then it came. It always starts the same way: that accelerated scream of a drone dive-bombing in the distance, alarms on phones, the first wave testing the city’s air… pic.twitter.com/MqEuEYhY6B
— Shaun Pinner (@olddog100ua) November 8, 2025
For those of us living in cities like Dnipro, this war has long ceased to be something that happens “at the front.” It’s above your head, it’s in your chest, it’s the vibration through your floor at three in the morning. It’s the waiting.
Aftermath and resolve
By daylight, firefighters were still dousing hotspots while engineers inspected the shell-damaged power grid. Across Kyiv and Poltava regions, similar scenes unfolded, impact sites cordoned off, unexploded drone parts scattered across streets and fields.
The Air Force continues to verify ten additional missile impacts whose debris fields are still being analysed. President Zelenskyy has once again urged allies to strengthen air-defence supplies ahead of winter.
For ordinary Ukrainians, this is life under siege, and yet, somehow, life goes on. People sweep glass from stairwells, volunteers deliver hot tea to rescuers, and generators hum back to life as the sun rises over another day of survival.
