Rescuers work at the site of an apartment building damaged during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine. [Photo Credit: Reuters]

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, killing at least 25 people, wounding scores more and damaging around 130 buildings in the ​deadliest attack on the capital this year.

Multiple explosions shook central Kyiv and reverberated across the capital throughout the night as thousands of residents rushed to bomb shelters and underground metro stations. Huge columns of ‌smoke filled the skyline.

Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said on Telegram that the death toll stood at 25 and was likely to rise as rescue teams worked through the night, sifting through rubble in search of trapped residents.

He said teams at one site in an eastern suburb on the capital’s left bank of the Dnipro River had recovered five bodies while eight residents were unaccounted for.

The scale and spread of destruction across the ​breadth of the capital had little precedent even in a war now in its fifth year. Twenty-four people died in an attack on Kyiv in May.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who cut short his visit to Ireland and rushed home, ​visited the site where a nine-storey residential building was half destroyed. He blamed the destruction in part on a failure of allies to deliver promised air defenses.

Later, in his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said the issue of air defences would be “one of the key outcomes” of next week’s NATO summit in Turkey, as he repeated his call for the development of European air ​defences.

Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight, the Ukrainian air force said. Yuri Ihnat, the Air Force spokesperson, said the number of ballistic missiles was unusually high and the interception rate was low. Ukraine has struggled with shortages of Patriot missiles in recent months.

The Russian Defence Ministry, in a Telegram post, said its “massive attack” using long-range, high-precision air-, land- and sea-launched weapons and drones hit military ​and energy facilities, as well as airports in Kyiv and other locations.

Moscow said the attacks were retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia. Kyiv, which has stepped up strikes in recent weeks on Russia’s domestic fuel supply, said it had ​hit an oil refinery overnight in the Russian region of Nizhny Novgorod, where the governor reported one person killed in a strike on an industrial facility.

The Kremlin said Russian military commanders had briefed President Vladimir Putin about the Russian attacks, adding that Moscow would increase pressure ‌to achieve its ⁠war aims.