“The enemy continues to launch missiles at the capital,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram early Thursday, as Russian missiles and drones struck the city. Hours later, he reported that five healthcare workers had been wounded in the Shevchenkivskyi district. One was in critical condition.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said the attacks set off fires, destroyed a residential building and damaged a medical facility. Officials have not said more about how the medical site was hit.
AFP journalists in central and eastern Kyiv heard more than a dozen explosions. Residents, some with children and pets, ran for metro stations that were being used as shelters.
“Kyiv is under attack from ballistic missiles and UAVs,” Klitschko wrote, adding that blasts could be heard across the city.
A second blast near the first
An AFP reporter in central Kyiv saw an explosion during an air-raid alert earlier in the night, followed by smoke and flames. Firefighters and ambulances were on the scene. Around 50 minutes later a second blast erupted close to the first impact site and sent debris flying.
The Ukrainian air force had warned that ballistic missiles were on their way to the capital. President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had cut short a visit to Dublin on Wednesday after intelligence reports of an impending Russian strike, had told a news conference that Moscow was about to launch a massive attack.
“I urge our people to be especially careful, to protect themselves, their children, and, of course, their families; to use shelters and heed air raid alerts in Ukraine – this is very important,” he said. Zelensky added that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been preparing this massive strike against Ukraine for some time now”.
Background to the strike
Russian forces have hit Ukrainian cities, Kyiv among them, with repeated waves of missiles and drones over more than four years of invasion, which has become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. In recent weeks Ukraine has widened its own long-range drone campaign inside Russia, aiming at energy infrastructure and military targets. Moscow says its air defences shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones in recent days.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a study on Wednesday putting military casualties in the war at more than two million, most of them on the Russian side. US efforts to broker an end to the fighting have not worked so far.
