Russia launches missiles at Kyiv, killing at least 3 people and wounding others
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a predawn missile barrage at the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, killing three people, including a 9-year-old and her mother, and damaging apartment buildings, schools and a children’s hospital, officials said. It was the highest toll from a single attack on Kyiv over the last month.
A 33-year-old woman died as she and others waited to enter a locked Kyiv air-raid shelter, leaving her and others at the mercy of falling missile fragments, according to her husband. Officials ordered an investigation into what happened.
The attack using what Ukrainian officials said were short-range Iskander ground-launched missiles coincided with events scheduled in Kyiv to celebrate International Children’s Day. Those events were canceled.
Ukrainian air defenses shot down all 10 cruise and ballistic missiles launched by the Kremlin’s forces, but falling debris caused damage and casualties on the ground, wounding 16 people, authorities said.
Russia has kept up a steady barrage on the Ukrainian capital and other parts of the country in recent weeks as the government in Kyiv readies what it says is a counteroffensive to push back Moscow’s troops, 15 months after their full-scale invasion. Kyiv was the target of a reported 17 drone and missile attacks last month.
Russian air defenses stopped eight drones converging on Moscow, officials said Tuesday, in an attack that Russian authorities blamed on Ukraine.
“Children’s Day has to be about safe childhood, summer, life,” tweeted Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. “But today it is about new crimes of [Russia] against children.”
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that the dead were a 9-year-old girl, her mother and another woman.
At the Kyiv air-raid shelter that was locked, Yaroslav Riabchuk said he and his wife of 17 years, Natalia, were outside with others when he ran around the back of the building to summon the guard in charge.
“I ran, but then an explosion happened,” Riabchuk said. “Shattered glass started falling, and I knew I had to run back. When I returned, it was over. There was a lot of blood, women, children.”
Like Ukraine, its eastern neighbor and fellow former Soviet republic, Moldova is struggling to keep from being turned into a puppet of Russia once more.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities were investigating what happened. He gave orders to the heads of the city’s districts to immediately check whether all the shelters in Kyiv are accessible.
United Nations human rights monitors said six children were killed and 34 were wounded in Ukraine last month alone.
Since February 2022, at least 525 children have been killed and at least 1,047 have been injured, according to the U.N.’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
“Sadly, as the world marks International Children’s Day, there is little to celebrate in Ukraine where civilians, including children, continue to pay a heavy price,” said Matilda Bogner, the mission’s chief.
Damage that has gone unrepaired for months at a Russian-occupied dam is causing dangerously high water levels in a reservoir in southern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry cited different figures for child casualties in the war, saying at least 484 children have been killed and 992 wounded. It was not immediately possible to reconcile those numbers with the U.N. figures.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting with families via video link to mark International Children’s Day.
Putin met with families who have many children and vowed to maintain state subsidies and other measures to support them. When one of the participants voiced confidence that Russia would be victorious in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Putin said: “It will be so.”
“There is no doubt about it, because we are protecting our land, our people and our values,” he said.
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Russia has repeatedly targeted Kyiv with waves of drone and missile attacks since the start of the invasion, but attacks on the capital have significantly intensified over the last month as Ukraine prepares for a counteroffensive. While most incoming weapons are shot down, many Kyiv residents are anxious and tired after weeks of sleepless nights listening to the sound of explosions.
“Russia is probably primarily seeking to degrade Ukraine’s improved air defenses by trying to go after air-defense launchers and by prompting the Ukrainians to fire off stocks of expensive air-defense missiles,” a Western official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
“But in this, we think it’s unlikely to be notably successful. Ukraine is becoming quite adept at dedicating less-advanced defense systems to neutralize the relatively easy targets that the drones present,” the official said.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the Kremlin’s forces were targeting Kyiv because it is a symbol of Ukrainian power.
“It’s a psychological attack to intimidate and demoralize Ukrainians and to show they are capable of everything,” she said in an interview with the Associated Press.
There has been talk for months of a spring counteroffensive by Ukraine to wrest back territory from Russian forces, but the drive has yet to begin.
One of Thursday’s explosions sent missile fragments ripping into an apartment building in a leafy neighborhood. In the morning light, paramedics gingerly escorted an elderly woman away from the building as the bare feet of a person killed in the attack poked out from underneath a plastic tarpaulin in a roped-off area between the trees.
“Around 3 a.m. there was a strike over there. I woke up and saw the fire. My door was smashed, I woke up my mom and ran to the corridor,” said resident Nikita Maslun, peering through a broken window. “Then we went down and ran outside. We saw people running. Windows were shattered and balconies destroyed.”
In the Desnianskyi district, debris fell on a children’s hospital and a nearby multi-story building. Two schools and a police department were damaged. In other areas, blast waves blew out windows.
Germany has told Russia to close four consulates after Moscow set a limit on the number of staff members at the German Embassy and related bodies in Russia.
Across Ukraine, the presidential office said Thursday, seven civilians were killed and 27 injured over the previous 24 hours.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said groups of Ukrainian fighters attempted Thursday to enter Russia’s Belgorod region but were repulsed. The largest contingent consisted of about 70 men, five tanks and four armored vehicles, the ministry said.
Elsewhere, a group that calls itself the Russian Volunteer Corps and purports to include Russians fighting on the Ukrainian side released a video claiming that it was on the border with Russia and about to launch a cross-border raid on the town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region.
A similar group that calls itself the Freedom of Russia Legion also announced a plan to launch a cross-border raid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a surprise commencement address via livestream at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on Thursday.
The two groups claimed responsibility for a cross-border raid last month that marked one of the most serious such attacks on Russian territory, prompting authorities to evacuate a town near the border.
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