Russian glide bombs that struck central Sumy on 29 September damaged a 19th-century church, the city cemetery around it, and a bronze statue of Christ, NV reported, citing the diocesan outlet Pravoslavna Sumshchyna. The same strike hit a school and nearby homes. Russia kept up its attacks across Ukraine over the following night and day.

Russia continues its terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and churches are among its routine targets, from a church its incendiary drone burned to the ground in Donetsk Oblast to one its drone damaged in western Ukraine's Lviv. Its strikes keep landing in city centers where people live, study, and pray, as when a drone hit Kyiv's Academy of Sciences in broad daylight.

The church near the epicenter

Russia struck Sumy with four guided aerial bombs. The blast damaged the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, a national-level architectural monument that stood near the epicenter. The church belongs to the Sumy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

Almost the entire building was damaged, said the rector, Archpriest Mykola Holyk. The blast wave knocked out windows and broke nearly every pane.

Plaster fell and the ceiling collapsed in several places. It tore out doors and wooden fittings, knocked some icons from their places, and holed the roof in many spots. Large and small fragments of the bomb pitted the walls.

Local patrons paid to build the church between 1843 and 1851, in the late classicist style.

A cut across Christ's chest

In front of the church stands a bronze statue of Christ, placed in the late 19th century on the grave of Dmytro Sukhanov, a merchant and former mayor of Sumy. Bomb fragments left a cut across the statue's chest. The statue is a local landmark of monumental art, the outlet Tsukr noted. The strike also damaged about 50 graves in the Central City Cemetery beside the church.

"The godless enemy continues to kill civilians, endanger children, and destroy schools, homes, hospitals, churches, and cemeteries," the diocese said.

The same attack hit a school where students were sheltering, and a residential area where two people were killed and six injured, three of them children. In September, Russian strikes on Kyiv also damaged two churches belonging to the same Moscow-linked church, the Exaltation of the Cross on Podil and the Pokrova Church on Priorka.

Another day of Russian strikes

Overnight on 1 October, Russia launched 107 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine, 63 of them jet-powered, the Air Force said. Air defenses downed or suppressed 87, and drones hit 11 locations. In Sumy, a guided bomb hit private homes, injuring two women and damaging about six houses, city military administration head Serhii Kryvosheienko reported. On the morning of 30 September, a Russian strike set a shopping center in Sumy Oblast's Romny district on fire, and crews fought the blaze until late that night, the State Emergency Service said. In Kyiv on the morning of 1 October, a drone hit a school in the Solomianskyi district while children sheltered inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were in the shelter, and no one was hurt, police said. A warehouse fire in Kyiv's Obolon district injured one person.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian mortar fire killed two men in Sumy Oblast's Seredyna-Buda hromada, and 15 people were injured across the oblast, the regional administration reported. A morning drone attack killed a 50-year-old man in Mykolaiv Oblast, and drones killed a 44-year-old man in Nikopol district, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Kherson Oblast, Russian attacks killed one person and injured four. Eight people were hurt in Kharkiv Oblast, six in Kyiv Oblast, five in Donetsk Oblast, and three in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, according to regional authorities.

A Russian strike on an apartment building in Kharkiv injured dozens of people, many of them children, early on 28 September, regional prosecutors reported. Through the rest of the day, Russian drones hit Kyiv, Dnipro, and other cities, killing civilians in several of them.

Russia has moved much of its aerial campaign to jet-powered drones that fly too fast for the cheap interceptors Ukraine built against older models. Every switch to a faster weapon reopens gaps in city defenses that Ukraine had only just begun to close.

Two floors partly destroyed in a Kharkiv apartment block

Russia hit a nine-story building in Kharkiv's Saltivskyi district around 04:00. By early afternoon, the count had risen to 43 injured, including 11 children, prosecutors said.

A man of 43 and a girl of 14 remain in hospital with blast wounds, and the others have moderate or light injuries, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said. Three children lived in the apartment that took the hit. Their father carried them out himself, and none of them was seriously hurt.

The strike hit the second floor and destroyed the ceiling between the third and fourth floors. Rescuers brought 32 people out of the building. Across the district, the attack damaged 18 apartment buildings and blew out more than 1,500 windows. More than 100 volunteers are helping city services seal them, Syniehubov added.

A resident who fled Kramatorsk a year and a half ago said her family never heard the blast itself.

"We didn't hear any explosion. Glass came pouring down, and a column of smoke stood there," Yuliia Baldzhy told Suspilne Kharkiv. "The children were sleeping in another room, and my husband and I barely squeezed through, grabbed them, and got out."

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city had not taken a hit "of this level" in some time. Officials are still establishing the weapon. Syniehubov named guided aerial bombs (KABs) and counted six of them over the oblast in the past day. Prosecutors named a UMPB-5, a Russian munition, as the preliminary version. Terekhov said the city was checking whether it was a KAB or a Banderol, a small cruise missile.

Russia has hit Kharkiv high-rises with guided bombs before. In November 2024, one such strike injured 25 people, including an infant.

Kyiv hit through the night and into the day

In the middle of the working day, a Russian jet drone struck the main building of the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv's historic center. The attack killed a woman and injured five people, the Kyiv City Military Administration said. Three of them were hospitalized, Klitschko said. People climbed out of windows to escape the fire.

"Russia will definitely get a response to this," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Overnight and into the morning, Russian drones hit a gas station in Obolon, a café by a gas station, office buildings, and a 16-story residential building in Podil. The attacks injured three teenagers in Podil, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. A 17-year-old boy was hospitalized.

Nationwide, Russia launched 165 drones overnight, 79 of them jet-powered, the Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 112, and hits were recorded at 14 locations.

The capital is now under attack daily. On 27 September, Russian strikes injured nine people in Kyiv, and Russia hit a Kyiv data center twice. That evening, a Russian drone struck the Stolychnyi market in Sofiivska Borshchahivka, just outside the city, and killed two people. Zelenskyy wrote that one of the two killed in Kyiv Oblast was a citizen of Azerbaijan.

Deaths in Dnipro and Synelnykove

Around 11:15, a Russian drone hit a business center in central Dnipro, killing three people. The number of injured rose to 15, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. Rescuers led 47 people out of the burning building, regional council head Mykola Lukashuk said.

"Nearby are residential buildings, a park, a library, offices, shops. The center of Dnipro. In the middle of the working day, hundreds of people are here," Hanzha wrote.

In Synelnykove, a Russian strike on a logistics company's branch killed one person. It injured three others, including a 15-year-old boy now in hospital in serious condition.

Overnight, Russian drones also hit infrastructure in the Vasylkivka community and a market in Nikopol.

Strikes across other regions

In Kharkiv Oblast on 27 September, a Russian FPV drone killed a 67-year-old driver in Shestakove, prosecutors said. A drone on fiber-optic control also killed a 41-year-old woman in a car in Velykyi Burluk and injured a 46-year-old man.

Explosions sounded in Poltava overnight. In Rivne Oblast, a Russian attack damaged a detached house without injuring anyone. In Odesa Oblast, Russia struck a warehouse, and an evening attack injured a man of 62 and a woman of 63. Zelenskyy also listed a Palau-flagged ship hit in Odesa Oblast and an ice cream plant damaged in Zhytomyr Oblast, in the same post.

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.