Russia has carried out one of its biggest ever ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, launching a five-hour raid that left at least one person dead and seven injured, with fires and damage across the city.
Ukrainian officials said the capital was hit with about 40 Iskander-M and hypersonic Zircon missiles. Residents heard an air raid siren sound at 1.30am. There was the sound of air defences followed minutes later by a series of booms and explosions.
Houses in Kyiv’s historic centre shook, and car alarms blared, as dozens of missiles arrived in less than an hour. There was a second air raid siren at 6.30am, with more impacts reported.
A three-storey building caught fire in the central Shevchenkivsky district. Rescuers dug out several people trapped inside and recovered a body. Four other areas were hit, with fires reported at office and residential buildings and a dormitory.
Residents sheltering inside Lukyanivska metro station posted footage after the ceiling in the ground-floor vestibule collapsed because of a massive blast wave. The station is temporarily closed.
“According to preliminary information, one person was, sadly, killed as a result of the attack,” the city military administration said on Telegram. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said seven people were wounded.
Russia has been firing drones and missiles at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities almost daily since it launched its full-scale 2022 invasion. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with western allies to help Ukraine bolster its air defences and to supply it with advanced US-made Patriot interceptors capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s own stocks of interceptors appear to have dwindled. The attacks come amid big anti-government protests in Kyiv following Zelenskyy’s decision to sack the country’s popular and modernising defence minister Mykhailo Federov. Demonstrators want Federov reinstated and the Soviet-style commander in chief, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, sacked instead.
There have also been attacks on Russia. On Saturday, Ukraine sent attack drones to destroy e-commerce warehouses in the Moscow and Tambov regions, killing eight people and causing major fires.
Earlier on Saturday Russian strikes killed five people and wounded almost 20 in several regions.
“In response to Russian strikes on our civilian infrastructure and on our cities and communities, two major logistics facilities were hit – in the Moscow and Tambov regions,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian president alleged the centres were used “to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment”.
