“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television, commenting on the attack. “Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said Monday that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense, before pledging to discuss it in Ankarra.

Accusing Russia of “blindly attacked civilians from the air,” she said Europe would “keep increasing the pressure until Russia ends the bloodshed.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, sea drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities that repair air defense systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the city and surrounding region. The claims could not be independently verified.

Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.

“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, in a post on Telegram.

A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.

The lights went out, the smell of burning filled the air and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.

“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”

Halina Ivanivna, a 61-year-old Kyiv resident, said she woke to the sound of the first strike at around 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began to collapse around her.

“Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.

About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.

An NBC News producer in Kyiv saw a vast column of thick smoke rising into the sky from her window this morning. There were no cars on the streets or sounds of the city, she said, noting a stream of reports from local authorities confirming death and destruction.