A jet-powered drone slammed into Kyiv's National Academy of Sciences at a steep angle on Monday morning, killing at least two people and setting part of the historic building ablaze. Video circulated online showed the projectile hitting at speed before bright orange flames spread through the structure, while workers leaned from windows in panic. Volodymyr Horbulin, a former secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, was inside the building when it was hit. His assistant, who had been standing near the entrance, was killed.

Horbulin himself was lightly wounded. The academy sits in one of Kyiv's most symbolically loaded neighbourhoods — close to the German Embassy, a cathedral, the national opera house, and several government ministries. In a statement released shortly after the attack, the institution described the strike as "Russian terror" and "barbarity" directed at "peaceful people who were simply at their workplaces." Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Moscow of deliberate cynicism in targeting a scientific institution during working hours, and called on Ukraine's allies to accelerate the delivery of air-defence systems.

Hours later, Kyiv was hit again. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that missile debris had fallen into the courtyard of one residential building and that a second had caught fire in a separate district of the city. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a medical facility was also struck on Monday, bringing the nationwide death toll from drone attacks that day to at least nine, with more than 80 people wounded across the country. The recurring thread in all of this is speed.

Russia has shifted toward faster, higher-flying jet drones that Ukraine's existing interceptors are struggling to track and destroy.