Russian ballistic missiles kill three, hit water main in Kyiv, officials say
KYIV – Russian forces launched air attacks on Kyiv and other locations in Ukraine early Saturday morning, killing at least three in the capital, officials said – the latest deadly assault on Ukraine aimed at weakening the country during the cold winter months.
Loud explosions could be heard in Kyiv just before 6 a.m., shortly after which air raid sirens sounded out.
Ukraine’s air defenses shot down two ballistic missiles “in the Kyiv region,” the country’s Air Force wrote on Telegram. Ballistic missiles fly at high speeds that make it difficult for antiaircraft systems to intercept them or for air raid alerts to warn before they arrive.
“A production building of an enterprise was partially destroyed (and) buildings, the entrance to the metro, cars and the main water supply were damaged,” the Air Force wrote.
The damaged water main temporarily cut off water supplies to parts of the city, Washington Post reporters and local media reports said. A Washington Post photographer also visited the scene shortly after the attack and saw a charred body being extracted from a burned-out van and two other body bags.
The three confirmed fatalities were a security guard at a dining establishment, and a man and woman in a minibus, the prosecutor’s office said.
“A nation that seeks peace does not launch ballistic missiles at the center of a city or kill innocent people on their way to work,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, wrote on Telegram. “The Russians continue to destroy, devastate, and kill. In their warped perception, this is what peace looks like.”
For its part, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement posted on social media that it “conducted a group strike with precision-guided weapons against facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.”
The attack was in response to Ukrainian strikes with American-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles on “civilian infrastructure” in Russia’s Belgorod region, the ministry said, and included among its targets the Luch Design Bureau, where Ukraine produces missile systems.
“The targets of the strike were achieved, and all facilities were hit,” the ministry wrote.
Ukraine’s Air Force said that its air defenses also shot down or otherwise neutralized all but one of 39 drones in 12 Ukrainian regions.
However, in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian-launched ballistic missile struck “one of the city’s enterprises,” the Air Force said, but did not provide further details.
At least 10 people were injured and “others may still be trapped under the rubble,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
“All those who help the Russian state in this war must be under pressure that is no less tangible than these blows,” Zelenskyy said. “We can only do this in unity with the entire world.”
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Serhiy Morgunov in Potsdam, Germany, and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.