Russian drone strikes Ukraine’s security service headquarters

A Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s powerful SBU security service in central Kyiv on Friday afternoon, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to call for retaliation.

The kamikaze drone “was aimed directly” at the office of the SBU head, Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that he had ordered “an appropriate, tangible response and, where possible, one that mirrors this strike”.

Russia has in the past week stepped up drone strikes using new tactics that have ravaged Ukrainian commercial warehouses and energy infrastructure. Huge night-time barrages combining drone and ballistic missiles have given way to near-constant raids by small numbers of fast, jet-powered drones that Ukrainian air defences have struggled to counter.

The shift follows a sustained campaign by Ukraine to target energy infrastructure and logistics centres inside Russia, aiming to grind parts of its enemy’s economy to a halt.

Ukrainian authorities did not report any fatalities on Friday and the SBU said its head, Oleksandr Poklad, was not injured. Strategic agencies such as the SBU have largely dispersed their employees away from command centres to reduce the risk of such strikes.

Both Ukraine and Russia have intensified their long-range strikes in recent months, but Moscow has not previously attacked the SBU headquarters and other government buildings in Kyiv remain largely untouched. Last year, a missile caused serious damage to Ukraine’s cabinet building, but Kyiv said it failed to detonate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Moscow would not strike what he called “decision-making centres” in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiha called the attack a “major escalation that demands resolute responses”.

The drone hit in the afternoon in a bustling central district that houses the offices of scores of Ukrainian and international organisations as well as the French, German, Italian and Polish embassies. The SBU building itself faces the Saint Sophia Cathedral, a Unesco-protected 11th-century church.

Ambulances quickly swirled through the afternoon traffic to reach the scene, with armed SBU officers rushing to prevent passers-by from taking pictures of the highly secured building.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence and the Kremlin are yet to comment on the incident.

The SBU has played a lead role in Ukraine’s war against Russia but has this week been engulfed in controversy after several officers were involved in a shootout in central Kyiv with members of a rival intelligence agency. Zelenskyy sacked a top SBU official in response.

Zelenskyy said US envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would visit Moscow before arriving in Kyiv on Sunday, when they are expected to discuss the negotiation process.

Zelenskyy urged Russia to refrain from launching air strikes “in the time needed to conduct these negotiations and to resolve logistical issues linked to the American visit” and said Ukraine would pause its own long-range attacks during the visit.