More than a dozen explosions rolled across Kyiv early Thursday as Russian missiles and drones hit the capital. At least five people were wounded, and fires broke out. AFP journalists in the central and eastern parts of the city counted the blasts.
Families, some with small children and pets in tow, packed into metro stations that serve as shelters.
“Kyiv is under attack from ballistic missiles and UAVs,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram, adding that blasts could be heard across the city. “The enemy continues to launch missiles at the capital,” he said.
In a later post the mayor reported that five health workers had been hurt in the Shevchenkivskyi district. One of them was in critical condition.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Telegram that the strikes started fires, destroyed a residential building and damaged a medical facility.
Two blasts in the centre
Hours before, an AFP reporter in central Kyiv saw an explosion during an air-raid alert. A cloud of smoke and flames followed, and firefighters and ambulances rushed to the scene. About 50 minutes later a second blast went off near the first impact site and threw debris into the air.
The Ukrainian air force had warned that ballistic missiles were heading for the capital. The attack also followed a sudden change of plans by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who left a visit to Dublin early on Wednesday because of intelligence reports of an imminent Russian strike.
“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 told a news conference. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been preparing this massive strike against Ukraine for some time now”.
The wider war
Russia has sent waves of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, Kyiv among them, throughout an invasion now in its fifth year. Ukraine, for its part, has stepped up long-range drone attacks inside Russia in recent weeks, going after energy infrastructure and military targets. Russian officials have reported repeated strikes in border regions, and Moscow says its air defences intercepted hundreds of Ukrainian drones in recent days.
A study released Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, found that the war has produced more than two million military casualties, with Russian forces suffering most of them. American efforts to broker an end to the fighting have so far failed.
