The EU Delegation and all EU embassies will keep working in Kyiv despite Russia's warning that foreign diplomats should leave or risk their lives, EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová said on 4 October. Poland and Estonia also said their embassies would stay, calling the threats an attempt to intimidate Europe.

Russia attacks Kyiv daily as Moscow tries to make the city unlivable. Alongside the strikes, it now threatens the foreign missions that anchor Ukraine's support in the capital.

"We are staying"

Russia's Foreign Ministry singled out the embassies still working in Kyiv and the foreign officials who keep visiting Ukraine, Mathernová wrote. Moscow claimed that if something happened to them, the responsibility would be theirs.

"The responsibility for russian attacks belongs to russia! Not to anybody else," Mathernová wrote, adding: "Moscow wants to scare Europe into reducing its support for Ukraine. That will not happen."

The EU Delegation continues its work while taking the security of its team seriously, she added.

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She pointed to the morning's strike on the Northern Bridge, saying the repeated attacks disrupt the connections between the two banks of the Dnipro. People worry about getting to work, reaching their families, and getting home safely, she wrote.

Poland and Estonia keep their embassies open

Poland's Foreign Ministry said it had no intention of changing how its Kyiv embassy works. The Kremlin's threats and calls for diplomats to leave show it is trying to intimidate Europe and undermine support for Ukraine, the ministry said. Such threats contradict international law and will not work, it added.

Estonia's Foreign Ministry said its embassy stays in Kyiv and its support for Ukraine remains firm. Russia's threats only strengthen Estonia's resolve to stand with Ukraine, the ministry said.

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The European Commission also responded. Russia's threats show the Kremlin is losing the war and losing its self-control, Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said, Suspilne reported.

More aid, more sanctions

This year alone, the EU has approved €28.3 billion ($32.3 billion) in defense procurement plans for Ukraine and is releasing another €6.6 billion ($7.5 billion) linked to military aid, Mathernová wrote. It is also moving forward with its biggest-ever sanctions listings against Russia, and this week imposed new sanctions over the deportation of Ukrainian children.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to Kyiv on the same day, as Russian attacks on the city continued. He and Zelenskyy visited the National Academy of Sciences building, hit by a Russian drone in September, and Zelenskyy thanked him for coming despite the air raid alert, calling it "a needed and brave signal," in a post on Telegram. Germany remains a reliable partner at Ukraine's side even in difficult times, Merz wrote.

Russia is preparing to make daily life in Kyiv harder before winter, aiming at the ordinary places civilians use rather than at military sites, The Economist reported. Ukrainian officials say the push blends bombing, sabotage, and disinformation, and expect it to peak in November.

Every winter of its full-scale invasion, Russia has tried to freeze Ukrainians into surrender, and each year the strikes reach deeper into ordinary life. The civilian casualties recorded in 2026 have already passed the whole of last year, the UN says.

From the power grid to the grocery store

Russia has already turned its drones on Kyiv's supermarkets, food warehouses, and data centers this year. On 28 September, a Russian jet drone struck the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv. The strike killed two people, the Academy said. Survivors climbed from the windows of the burning building. A senior Ukrainian official told The Economist the Kremlin now wants shoppers too afraid to enter a store. Russia is also keeping its winter routine, hitting electricity, water, and sewage systems.

Cheaper jet drones that stream live to their pilots

Most of the damage now comes from Russia's cheap jet drones, The Economist said. Pilots guide them onto targets and watch a live video feed. They are hard to stop, and Russia's ballistic missiles are deadlier still as Ukraine's supply of Patriot interceptors dwindles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had agreed a new Patriot interceptor package, but it remains short of interceptors of its own. A security official told The Economist that Russia has thousands of drones stockpiled and plans to use its entire ballistic missile stock within two months.

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Sabotage, chaos, and a city that won't switch off

Ukraine's counter-intelligence services say they foil seven or eight Russian plots a week, and officials believe some sleeper cells remain. The campaign's third element, disinformation, targets war fatigue and corruption scandals. Russia runs the same plan every year, hoping its bot farms will push Ukrainians onto the streets to demand surrender, said Andrii Kovalenko, who heads the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

"It's nonsense," he told The Economist, adding that someone is feeding the idea to Putin so they can steal more money.

Kyiv is also far harder to shut down than Moscow assumes, Kovalenko said. The city's internet is too decentralized for a handful of strikes to knock out, The Economist noted. Energy expert Olha Babii said the test is how fast crews restore power, not whether it can be destroyed. The capital is emptying, its population down from about 3.7 million to 3.3 million by The Economist's count.

A Ukrainian defense company has shown a new way to knock FPV drones out of the sky, unveiling a net-firing interceptor at the IT Arena tech conference in Lviv, dev.ua reported. The system, called Mangal and developed by Phantom Defense, is still a prototype—the company says the first production units could reach the market in a few months.

Ukraine's counter-drone work has turned into a crowded contest, with firms racing to field jammers, interceptor drones, and net-throwers that can blunt Russia's growing use of cheap FPVs.

What Mangal does

Phantom Defense designed the modular launcher to defend positions, vehicles, and other targets against enemy drones. It fires a special net weighted with sinkers. The net opens the moment it fires, tangling the drone and dragging it down. One module holds six charges. Two cameras give the crew a clearer view, and the system can detect targets on its own, which speeds up how fast an operator spots a threat. Crews can fix Mangal in place to guard checkpoints, trenches, or infrastructure, or bolt it onto a vehicle.

Why a net

FPV drones—aircraft a pilot flies straight into a target—have become a routine danger along the front. A small, fast drone is hard to hit with a single round. A net spreads as it travels, so it is more forgiving to aim. Neither Phantom Defense nor the outlets covering the launch have said how far Mangal's net can reach.

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Other net-based counters

Other developers are turning to nets too. The WINFLY Spider is an interceptor drone that snares a target in a net and returns to its launch point intact, at about $27 a shot. That lets one aircraft make repeated intercepts instead of being spent on a single kill. Scan Horizon comes from Postup Solutions, a firm registered in Wrocław, Poland, and pairs a net launcher from Ukrainian company Ptashka Drones. Its net reaches about 30 meters. Contra Drone, meanwhile, has shown interceptor missiles that can reportedly carry net warheads alongside other options.

Last winter, eight Ukrainian companies told the defense minister that their interceptors were ready to knock Russia's jet-powered drones out of the sky. They were not. A fast-flying drone is the easy part of the design, while combat testing exposed what the interceptors lacked in key features to chase an evading jet-powered Geran, presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, said in an interview with NV.

Ukraine's answer to Russia's fast, hard-to-stop jet drones was supposed to be cheap interceptors, and last winter, their makers said they had them. But a jet Geran flies 450 to 500 kilometers an hour, up from the Geran-3's 320, varies its speed to slip past defenses, and will dodge harder once interceptors appear.

Catching one takes maneuverability, machine-vision target-lock, and fuel to loiter and search, not just speed, Flash said. Ukraine's cheap interceptors have already downed about half of Russia's slower drones, but the jet-powered systems have stayed a step ahead.

Eight makers said "ready"

At a meeting last winter called by Mykhailo Fedorov, then-defense minister, all eight interceptor makers reported the same thing: "everything's ready, the solution exists, it flies, we tested it, speed is sufficient," Flash recalled.

The mistake, he said, was that no one checked on them week to week. There were also too few jet Gerans in the skies then to test against.

"On the range, they showed: it flies. That was the problem," explained Flash.

Speed is the easy part

The engines are not the obstacle, Flash continues, since they can be bought abroad, and neither is a plane that flies fast in a straight line. The hard part is a machine agile enough to chase a jet-powered Geran, which is far more maneuverable than the propeller kind and will start changing altitude and throwing evasive maneuvers once interceptors appear.

Because an operator's aim frays at such speeds, he said, the decisive pieces are automatic target capture by machine vision and automatic terminal guidance.

"Building a construction that just flies fast is the easiest part," he added.

Mass orders must wait

That is why Ukraine cannot simply order thousands to blanket the country, Flash said: it first needs a proven design that works for any crew, from Security Service specialists to territorial defense soldiers, and is simple to launch, operate, and maintain.

Once such a sample exists, he said, scaling up is only a question of money. Meanwhile, the work is moving: a Ukrainian interceptor recently notched its first kills against jet Gerans and is heading toward mass production.

Russia's large combined missile-and-drone attack on Kyiv early on 24 September killed two people in the capital and damaged residential and civilian infrastructure, including a maternity hospital, according to Vitali Klitschko, the capital's mayor. The strike involved 282 attack drones alongside ballistic and hypersonic missiles, Ukraine's Air Force said.

The strike came as US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were pursuing an energy ceasefire during the UN General Assembly in New York. Ukraine was ready to stop attacks on Russian energy facilities if Moscow agreed to stop striking Ukraine's energy system, Zelenskyy said after meeting Trump on 22 September.

Air defense intercepts over 200 targets

Russia launched Zircon hypersonic missiles, an unspecified number of Iskander-M/S-400/KN-23 ballistic missiles, and 282 Shahed-type and Gerbera attack drones, Ukraine's Air Force said. The drones were accompanied by Banderol and Dan-T loitering munitions, as well as parody decoy drones.

By 08:00, Ukrainian forces had destroyed or suppressed 227 targets, including four Zircons, three ballistic missiles, one Banderol/Dan-T loitering munition, and 219 drones.

The Air Force did not disclose how many ballistic missiles Russia launched at Kyiv. Zelenskyy later said Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 60% of the ballistic missiles targeting the capital during three waves of attacks.

Zelenskyy added that the ballistic attack came while he was meeting US lawmakers in New York to discuss sanctions against Russia. He also called for more ballistic missile interceptors, saying Russia had targeted civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, a maternity hospital, energy facilities, and logistics.

Maternity hospital, residential buildings damaged

In Kyiv's Podilsky district, the maternity hospital's windows and part of its facade were damaged, according to the Ministry of Health. No casualties were reported inside the facility. One person was killed in a nearby parking lot, and a clinic-diagnostic center was also damaged.

In Dniprovskyi district, a residential building, a non-residential building, and several private houses were damaged. One private house was partially destroyed. A three-story administrative building was also damaged, and a body was found there. In the Solomiansky district, a warehouse was partially destroyed and caught fire. Missile debris fell on a roadway in Darnytskyi district.

In Kyiv Oblast, one person was injured, and eight objects were damaged across three districts, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said. The damage included private houses and vehicles.

Zelenskyy called for stronger sanctions against Russia and more air-defense interceptors as the attacks continued during the UN General Assembly week.