Informative · Russia-Ukraine war

Russia just flew a new jet drone and then hit a Kyiv school

1 hour ago · 1 October 2026Share

A military school building in Kyiv. File photo. — Віктор Полянко · CC BY-SA 4.0

A Russian drone just hit a school in Kyiv.

It happened this morning, a few hours ago, in the Solomianskyi district. There was an air raid alert going on at the time.

Vitalii Klitschko, the Mayor of Kyiv, posted about it on Telegram. He says quote "a fire has broken out. The children were in a shelter".

So here's the good news. No one is reported hurt.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service says the fire started on the third floor. Firefighters put it out. The building has four floors in total.

And the drone's warhead never even exploded.

Photos show a huge hole blown into the brick wall. You can see straight into the staircase. Burn marks everywhere. Windows smashed out.

AP's photo captions say it was a Shahed-type drone.

But here's the part that matters more than the school strike itself.

The day before, Russia flew a completely new weapon for the first time. Serhii Beskrestnov is the adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on defence technology. He says Russia used a jet-powered drone for the first time, and fitted it with a warhead built to cut down high-voltage power pylons.

So that drone was built for the power grid. Not for a school.

And Russia has been moving its whole drone fleet this way since late August. Faster. Jet-powered. Harder for Ukraine's air defences to shoot down than the old, slower Shahed drones.

Officials are calling the barrage the day before the heaviest Russian attack on Kyiv's power grid in months. Accounts differ on exactly how far back that comparison goes.

The rest of this story is for members.

Three people were killed in Kyiv the day before. Two women, 46 and 95 years old. And an employee of Kyivteploenergo, the city's heating utility. Seven more were wounded.

A Russian drone also hit the grounds of a nuclear research facility in Kyiv that same day. Ukraine's nuclear safety watchdog says a fire broke out. But the test reactor, shut down since 2022, was not damaged.

And the attacks didn't stop there.

A few hours after the school was hit, two more Russian drones struck near the supports of Kyiv's Southern Bridge over the Dnipro River. Metro and road traffic across the river was disrupted.

A data centre in the city's Pecherskyi district was also knocked out, after being hit again and again.

Britain responded the same day. It sanctioned 31 Russian individuals, entities and ships, over disinformation, dodging energy sanctions, and the mistreatment of Ukrainian civilians.

Russia has not commented on the school strike. It hasn't confirmed the new jet-powered drone either. Russian state media typically denies hitting schools, or says any damage is just a side effect of strikes on military targets.

So what don't we know?

Why Russia's newest weapon, built to take down power lines, flew the day before a different drone hit a school. Whether that failed warhead was a design fault, or just didn't go off this time.

And nationwide, Russian attacks killed at least six people and wounded 38 overnight into this morning, according to Ukraine's Air Force. That toll is still being updated, as rescue work carries on in Kyiv.

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Russia just flew a new jet drone and then hit a Kyiv school

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