Lavrov: Russia never deliberately struck non-military targets Fact checking minister’s remarks amid latest attack on Kyiv

"Russia has never deliberately struck targets that have not been related to the Armed Forces of Ukraine." This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in his recent interview given to the American NBC channel on August 24, 2025.

Russia’s top diplomat likes to frequently reiterate this point in conversations with foreign journalists, firmly defending the official government's position.

"During military operations in Ukraine, the Russian army strikes exclusively at military-industrial infrastructure targets, including 'decision-making centers,' but not civilian sites, Lavrov said during another interview, this time with both Russian and foreign media on December 26, 2024.

In the course of his latest interview, the American NBC anchor pressed the Russian FM on a recent Russian strike on an electronic factory that is owned by an American NASDAQ-listed company called Flex Ltd. during strikes on Western Ukraine.

An enraged Lavrov slammed host Kristen Walker for portraying the factory of producing merely consumer products and reiterated, yet again, that the Russian army is targeting only "as I said, either military enterprises, military sites, or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for the Ukrainian army", basing their decisions on "very good" information provided by Russian intelligence.

The FM's enraged tone did not succeed in deterring Walker from pushing Lavrov on this statement. She countered his response by recalling that "close to 50,000 civilians have either been killed or injured in this war. Russia has taken maternity warrants, churches, schools, hospitals, a kindergarten just this past week. So either the Russian military has terrible aim, or you are targeting civilians. Which is it?"

The Russian minister replied by requesting for his team to be sent detailed information "to which you just referred, because we never targeted the civilian targets of the kind you cited."

Lavrov’s claims, that the objects listed by the American anchor were never deliberately targeted by the Russian army, were met with appalment. Despite repeated statements by Russian authorities asserting that strikes are carried out exclusively on military targets, tens of thousands of civilians in Ukraine have been killed or injured since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), at least 13,580 civilian deaths have been documented, including 716 children, while 34,115 civilians have been reported injured. These figures were published in a report dated July 10; however, their monthly report for July alone recorded at least 1,674 civilian casualties.

Latest strike on Kyiv kills four children

A mere 4 days following this interview, Lavrov's stark assertions now stand in direct comparison with yet another strike on a residential building in Ukraine that has tragically been catapulted onto the cover pages of international media outlets.

On the night of August 27, another wave of large-scale aerial strikes were launched across Ukraine, including on a residential building in Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. The five-story building was hit directly, causing a wing of the structure to completely collapse from the first to the fifth floor.

From this attack alone authorities have reported at least 18 fatalities, including four children, with three of them from the ages of 2 to 17. As rescue operations are ongoing, those numbers are likely to climb. Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko has declared a day of mourning on August 29.

"The overnight attack on Kyiv shows a deliberate choice to escalate and mock the peace efforts," is how Kaja Kallas, the European Commission's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy responded to the news that the latest Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital also damaged the EU Delegation building offices there.

Katarina Mathernova, the EU envoy in Kyiv, called it "Moscow’s true answer to peace efforts."

The offices of other organizations have also been damaged following these latest attacks, including those of the British Council and the Ukrainska Pravda news agency, one of the country's leading English-language sources. While no casualties were reported on those facilities, the nature of their activity stands in direct contradiction to Lavrov's  assertions of never hitting non-military structures.

String of deadly attacks on civilian infrastructures in Kyiv

The August 27 attacks came after a short pause of several weeks where relative calmness came over the Ukrainian capital. It was on June 17 that the city recorded one of its deadliest attacks since the outbreak of the war in February 2022. Russian forces then launched 175 drones and 14 missiles (including 2 ballistic missiles) on the capital, which killed 23 people when a ballistic missile hit a nine-storey building.

The deadliest attack on the capital occurred on December 29, 2023, where 33 people died in the Shevchenkivskyi district. That night saw a mass attack across the whole country in which Russian forces deliberately hit residential areas and social infrastructure facilities, killing a total of 53 people.

Another attack which ranks high on the sad list of assaults on the Ukrainian capital since the outbreak of the war took place on July 8, 2024.

In the course of that attack, Russian missiles hit a residential building (killing 14 people including 5 children), an office building (7 killed), a healthcare facility (9 killed), a street near the Lukyanovskaya metro station (2 killed) and another 2 deaths at the country's largest children's hospital, the "Okhmatdet" hospital (Abbreviation for "Okhrana materinstva i detstva" [Protection of Motherhood and Childhood]) in central Kyiv. During these attacks, a total of 33 people died in the capital (corrected by authorities from the previously reported 34).

Commenting on the explosion at the Okhmatdet children's hospital, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov shifted the blame on Ukraine back then, accusing Ukraine's Armed Forces of having hit the hospital themselves during an attempt of deploying anti-missile strikes, going so far as calling it a "PR stunt" by Ukrainian authorities ahead of a planned NATO summit.

Those are just a compilation of some of the deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent times, which contrary to Lavrov's assertions have been widely reported on, with detailed documentation not only of the casualties but the damages obtained to the structures and analysis on the type of weapons used in the attacks.

As many reports have noted, some of the deadliest Russian attacks occurred on Ukraine after the beginning of the latest episode of negotiations through the help of mediators, be it in Istanbul, Washington or Anchorage.

"These Russian missiles and attack drones today are a clear response to everyone in the world who, for weeks and months, has been calling for a ceasefire and for real diplomacy. Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table. It chooses to continue killing instead of ending the war. And this means that Russia still does not fear the consequences," was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's first reaction to the latest attacks.

He specifically called upon the governments of China and Hungary to react to these atrocities that have called for peace in the conflict but, from Ukraine's stance, failed short of condemning Russia.

By Nazrin Sadigova