KYIV, Ukraine — Explosions rattled Kyiv during daylight Monday as Russian ballistic missiles took aim at the Ukrainian capital, hours after a more common nighttime barrage of the city by drones and cruise missiles.
Russian forces fired 11 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv at about 11:30 a.m., according to Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. All of them were shot down, he said, and puffs of white smoke could be seen in the blue sky over the city from street level.
Debris from the intercepted missiles fell in Kyiv’s central and northern districts during the morning, landing in the middle of traffic on a city road and also starting a fire on a building’s roof, the Kyiv military administration said. At least one civilian was reported hurt.
The blasts unnerved some locals, already under strain after being awakened by the night attack.
“After what happened last night, I react sharply to every siren now. I was terrified, and I’m still trembling,” shared Alina Ksenofontova, a 50-year-old woman who took refuge in the Kyiv subway with her dog Bublik.
The central station, Tetatralna, was crowded with sheltering locals.
Artem Zhyla, a 24-year-old who provides legal services abroad, took his laptop with him and kept working underground.
“I heard two or three explosions, went to the bathroom, and then I heard five or seven more explosions. That’s when I realized something terrible was happening,” he said.
In this grab taken from video released by Prigozhin Press Service on Monday, May 29, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group military company speaks on a camera at a champagne warehouse in Bakhmut, Ukraine.AP
Like many others in the capital, he feels exhausted and stressed. However, he has no intentions of giving up and plans to attend his yoga class to recharge.
“This is certainly not enough to break us,” he said.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and first lady Olena Zelenska both posted a video of what they said were frightened schoolchildren running and screaming down a Kyiv street toward a bomb shelter as sirens wail.Russia used Iskander short-range missiles in the morning attack, the spokesman for Ukraine’s air force said on local television.
The missiles were fired from north of Kyiv, Yurii Ihnat said without clarifying if he meant Russian territory. Kyiv lies around 236 miles from the Russian border.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that early Monday it launched a series of strikes targeting Ukrainian air bases with precision long-range air-launched missiles. The strikes destroyed command posts, radars, aircraft and ammunition stockpiles, it claimed. It didn’t say anything about hitting cities or other civilian areas.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned against indifference, saying the repeated strikes on civilian areas amounted to “war crimes.”“Russia’s drone and missile attacks on peaceful Ukrainian cities cannot be seen as usual, no matter how frequent they grow,” he tweeted in English.