Russia launched one of its heaviest overnight attacks on Kyiv, firing hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at the Ukrainian capital in a strike that tore through residential buildings, killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 90, according to Reuters.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Andrii Melnyk, speaking from Ukraine exclusively with Fox News Digital, said the assault marked «the most horrific night for Kyiv since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.»

«Early this morning, I spoke with my mother-in-law, who is in Kyiv. She told me she had never been so terrified. It felt as if the biblical Apocalypse were unfolding before her very eyes. Everyone was praying.»

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The explosions shook central Kyiv for hours as thousands of residents rushed into bomb shelters and underground metro stations. The attack caused the widest destruction in Kyiv so far in 2026 and was the deadliest strike on the capital since at least May, when 24 people were killed in an attack that brought down an apartment block. 

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones overnight, according to Reuters. 

Yuri Ihnat, the Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson, said the number of ballistic missiles was unusually high and that the interception rate for them was low, as Ukraine continues to face shortages of Patriot missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who cut short a visit to Ireland and returned to Ukraine, said damage had been reported at more than 20 sites across the capital.

«The main strike was directed at Kyiv,» Zelenskyy said. «Air defence supplies for Ukraine are an absolute and critical priority.»

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An explosion lights up the sky over the city during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 2, 2026. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning and said damage had been recorded across the city of roughly 3 million people.

Melnyk told Fox News Digital the attack should force the international community to confront Russia’s status inside the U.N. Security Council.

«And yet, this barbaric Russia continues to be treated at the U.N. as a normal member state,» he said. «It is time to end this parallel reality. Russia’s status as a permanent member of the Security Council should finally be called into question. Russia should be treated for what it has become: a pariah state.»

Emergency crews searched through the rubble of a nine-story building on the left bank of the Dnipro River as fires continued to burn after sunrise. City officials said some people remained trapped inside damaged residential buildings.

East2West footage showed the overnight barrage from inside Kyiv, including a baby sleeping as explosions flashed outside an open window and smoke from an earlier strike rose nearby. Other footage showed residents sheltering near a metro station as strikes hit the capital, as well as heavy damage across Kyiv, including residential buildings torn apart and thick smoke hanging over parts of the city.

More than 20 sites were damaged, including residential buildings, diplomatic accommodation and the National Institute of Biochemistry, where a state-of-the-art laboratory and offices were gutted.

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Rescuers conduct search and rescue operations at a multi-storey residential building damaged in a massive Russian missile and drone attack in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 2, 2026.  (Kyrylo Chubotin/Ukrinform)

Katarina Mathernova, the European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine, said Russia «unleashed hell on Kyiv» overnight and struck accommodation used by diplomatic personnel. Diplomats were not injured, but their belongings were damaged in a fire that engulfed the building, she said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a Telegram post that its «massive attack» used long-range, high-precision weapons and drones to strike military and energy facilities, as well as airports in Kyiv and other locations. Moscow said the attack was retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia. 

Ukraine said it hit an oil refinery overnight in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, where the regional governor reported one person killed in a strike on an industrial facility.

The Kremlin said Russian military commanders briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the attacks and said Moscow would continue increasing pressure on Ukraine to achieve its war aims.

Poland, a NATO and European Union member that borders Ukraine, briefly scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure. Finland also briefly issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland, its defense forces said.

Romanian Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu told Fox News Digital that Russian drones were detected in Ukraine roughly 30 kilometers from Romania’s border Wednesday, prompting NATO air-policing aircraft to respond.

«Two Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft deployed under the Enhanced Air Policing mission and operating from the 86th Air Base in Fetești in Romania, were scrambled to monitor the Romanian airspace situation near the border with Ukraine,» Țoiu said. «A Romanian Air Force IAR 330 Puma helicopter was also deployed. Such incidents have constantly accompanied Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.»

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Thursday that she would propose new sanctions on entities supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex in response to the strikes.

«The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed,» Kallas said in a post on X.

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A woman reacts near an apartment building damaged during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 2, 2026. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters)

Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians in strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022. 

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians but says attacks on what it calls civil infrastructure are legitimate because they affect Ukraine’s ability to wage war.

Reuters contributed to this report.

El Banco Central de Honduras mantuvo sin cambios la Tasa de Política Monetaria, una decisión que su presidente, Roberto Lagos, vinculó con las condiciones del mercado financiero y con la política de la Reserva Federal de Estados Unidos. El organismo también destacó la aprobación de la cuarta y quinta revisión del programa con el FMI.

Lagos dijo que la decisión respondió a un análisis de las condiciones actuales del mercado financiero, en el que no se identificaron presiones para modificar la tasa de referencia que guía el costo del dinero en la economía hondureña.

De acuerdo con el funcionario, la política monetaria del país continúa en sintonía con las decisiones de la Reserva Federal de Estados Unidos, lo que ha permitido mantener coherencia en el manejo de los instrumentos financieros en un contexto global marcado por ajustes graduales en las tasas de interés internacionales.

El mantenimiento de la TPM implica que el Banco Central considera que no existen riesgos inmediatos de inflación o desequilibrios financieros que obliguen a encarecer o abaratar el costo del crédito en el corto plazo.

En este escenario, la autoridad monetaria busca preservar la estabilidad de precios y evitar movimientos bruscos que puedan generar incertidumbre en el sistema financiero, en un entorno donde los bancos centrales de la región han optado por estrategias de cautela.

Lagos enfatizó que la política actual está “totalmente acoplada” a la tasa de la Fed, lo que reduce la necesidad de realizar ajustes independientes que puedan provocar distorsiones en el mercado cambiario o en los flujos de inversión.

Este tipo de alineación es común en economías altamente vinculadas al dólar estadounidense, donde las decisiones de la Reserva Federal tienen impacto directo en el comportamiento del crédito, la inflación y el tipo de cambio.

La decisión del Banco Central se enmarca en una estrategia de estabilidad macroeconómica orientada a evitar sobresaltos en los principales indicadores financieros del país.

Mantener la tasa sin cambios permite dar señales de previsibilidad a empresas, inversionistas y entidades financieras que dependen de condiciones claras para planificar sus operaciones.

En términos prácticos, la TPM funciona como una referencia clave para determinar el costo del crédito en la economía. Su estabilidad suele traducirse en condiciones más predecibles para préstamos, inversiones y operaciones del sistema bancario.

El BCH ha insistido en que la prioridad en esta etapa es preservar la estabilidad macroeconómica, controlar la inflación y mantener el equilibrio en el mercado cambiario, factores que influyen directamente en la confianza de los actores económicos.

En paralelo a la decisión sobre la tasa de política monetaria, el Banco Central destacó la reciente aprobación de la cuarta y quinta revisión del programa económico suscrito entre Honduras y el Fondo Monetario Internacional.

Para las autoridades, este visto bueno representa una señal sobre la conducción de la política económica del país y el cumplimiento de los compromisos establecidos en el acuerdo con el organismo multilateral.

La aprobación de estas revisiones permite el acceso a desembolsos programados y envía un mensaje a los mercados internacionales, que suelen seguir de cerca la relación de los países con el FMI como indicador de disciplina fiscal y monetaria.

Según explicó Lagos, el respaldo del FMI contribuye a mejorar la percepción de riesgo país, un factor clave para la atracción de inversión extranjera y el acceso a financiamiento en mejores condiciones.

Cuando un país mantiene acuerdos vigentes con el Fondo y cumple con sus metas, los mercados suelen interpretar esto como una señal de mayor credibilidad institucional, lo que puede traducirse en tasas de interés más favorables en los mercados internacionales.

En ese sentido, la estabilidad macroeconómica no solo se mide en términos internos, sino también en la forma en que los inversionistas globales perciben la capacidad del país para cumplir con sus obligaciones financieras.

Lagos subrayó que mantener reglas claras en la gestión económica es fundamental para fortalecer la confianza del sector privado y de los organismos multilaterales, lo que a su vez facilita la llegada de capital y la expansión de proyectos productivos.

Otro de los puntos señalados por el funcionario es el uso previsto de los recursos derivados del programa con el FMI, que serán destinados principalmente a inversión pública e infraestructura.

Este tipo de asignación busca cumplir con los compromisos del programa económico e impulsar el crecimiento a mediano plazo mediante obras que mejoren la competitividad del país.

The U.S. Secret Service «missed multiple opportunities» to prevent or disrupt the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump as he spoke to supporters during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said in a report released Thursday.

The 64-page document detailed several lapses in security that allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to get a line of sight of Trump as he stood on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the July 13, 2024, event.

«The Secret Service’s overall lack of policy and processes coupled with limited intelligence sharing and poor collaboration and communication with protectee staff and state and local law enforcement set the conditions that led to missing opportunities to prevent and detect the attempted assassination,» the report states.

Among the OIG’s findings was a failure to warn Trump’s protective detail that Crooks had a range finder and a long gun and had climbed onto the roof of a nearby building due to a lack of communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement.

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Instead, they operated out of separate locations 257 yards apart with intermittent and highly limited radio connectivity between them.

As a result, the Secret Service missed 102 radio transmissions regarding an increasingly intense search for a suspicious individual, including alerts that the suspect was on the roof with a long gun.

A flag is displayed during Donald Trump’s campaign rally as he returns to the site of the July assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa., Oct. 5, 2024.  (Reuters/Brian Snyder)

Because the Secret Service communications room only received a handful of phone calls and texts, agents failed to recognize the urgency of the threat and never warned Trump’s protective detail to delay the speech or remove him from the stage, the OIG said.

«Communications was a problem because of inoperability. There were too many command posts,» Paul Eckloff, a former Secret Service agent, told Fox News Digital. «The biggest failure that is probably not addressed in the OIG report is that they never should have accepted the risk of doing it at this site. It never should have been done. That roof had an egregious line of site.»

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Crooks was able to fire eight shots. Trump was grazed in the ear, and Corey Comperatore, 50, who was attending the rally, was killed. Two other spectators were critically injured but survived.

Moments after Trump was shot, Secret Service agents rushed the stage and moved him to safety.

In addition to a lack of communication, the Secret Service failed to detect Crooks’ drone flight that he used to view the campaign event stage less than three hours before the rally due to an under-trained operator and an equipment malfunction, the report states.

Crooks flew the drone undetected for almost nine minutes and flew 471 yards from the event stage at an altitude of 102 feet. During the rally, the Secret Service had a counter-drone system on site, but it malfunctioned.

The counter-drone system was not operational when Crooks flew his drone hours before he tried to kill Trump.

A U.S. Secret Service agent, left, protects President Donald Trump, right. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The agency also failed to share intelligence about a long-distance threat to Trump with the Pittsburgh field office and agents on site, the report said.

Agents also failed to secure the area outside the security perimeter and did not use available resources to block Crooks’ line of sight from the roof of the American Glass Research International building to Trump despite the line of sight being identified as a concern, the OIG said.

Despite identifying the AGR complex as a line-of-sight vulnerability during advanced walkthroughs, the Secret Service failed to ensure the view to the stage was obstructed.

«There should have been a better advance, more officers, more agents, but there’s simply a limit to that,» Eckloff said.

Officials originally proposed using trucks already onsite to block the view from the AGR complex, but Trump’s campaign staff rejected the idea because it would interfere with press photographs.

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An agent proposed a secondary location for the trucks but never verified that the campaign staff actually moved the equipment. As a result, Crooks had an unobstructed view of Trump’s podium from a distance of just 155 yards, the report said.

The turnout coat of Corey Comperatore, a retired volunteer fire department chief who was shot and killed in the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump, in the stands during a moment of silence during a rally in Butler, Pa., Oct. 5, 2024.  (Reuters/Carlos Barria)

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Secret Service and the White House.

The report offered several recommendations to improve the Secret Service’s processes for securing events, such as mandatory threat communication, enhanced counter-drone training and a process to formally document the identification and blocking of line-of-sight vulnerabilities.