Russian missiles targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at sunrise on Friday, killing at least one person and cutting heating to hundreds of residential buildings in cold temperatures.
Moscow said it attacked Ukraine as retaliation for a strike using Western missiles on a chemical plant in Russia earlier in the week.
The strikes came as Russia’s invasion nears its three-year mark.
The air force said it downed all five Iskander missiles Russia launched at the capital, but that debris caused damage in five districts.
“There were explosions after explosions in a row,” said 45-year-old Ksenia, who was staying at a hotel near the site of the wreckage.
The strikes killed a 53-year-old man and wounded 11 people, most suffering from shrapnel wounds, the police said.
It also cut heating to 630 residential buildings, as well as a dozen medical clinics and schools.
The first explosions occurred around 7:00 am local time, said AFP journalists in the Ukrainian capital, where officials had warned of a ballistic missile threat.
When a 35-year-old doctor named Victoria read the warnings on social media, she ran to a shelter.
“Even in the shelter, bricks fell on my head. It’s just horrible when people start running in from the street,” she told AFP.
‘Burn in Hell’
She had come out to look at the charred cars and buildings with blown-out windows at the site of an attack.
“Russians should burn in hell,” she said.
Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said Ukraine Patriot air defense systems to shoot down the missiles.
The Ukrainian think tank Defence Express said “all the missiles were successfully intercepted, but in one case, the warhead failed to be destroyed and it exploded near a business center in the city center.”
Moscow claimed responsibility for the overnight attack on Ukraine, which came a day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin had threatened to strike Kyiv.
“You know that such strikes on Russian territory have been carried out, and you know that the president has said that every time there will be a response,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
His comment came soon after the Russian defense ministry said that “in response to the actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its Western handlers, a combined strike with long-range precision weapons was launched today.”
The ministry said it had targeted an office of the SBU security service and a defense industry site and that “all the targets have been struck.”
Putin at a press conference on Thursday had suggested a “hi-tech duel” over Kyiv to test his claims that Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik, is impervious to air defenses.
“Let them set some target to be hit, let’s say in Kyiv,” he said.
“They will concentrate their air defenses there. And we will launch an Oreshnik strike there and see what happens.”
‘Dumbass’
Zelensky hit back by saying: “People are dying and he thinks it’s ‘interesting’. Dumbass!”
Putin’s statement was the latest in a series of threats aimed at increasing pressure on the war-torn country, which has faced nearly daily aerial attacks for almost three years.
Russian attacks also killed two people in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson Friday.
“Today Kherson woke up from numerous strikes of the Russian army. The occupants have created hell in the city,” governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Prokudin also said shelling in Kherson left 60,000 homes without electricity in the Kherson region.
Kherson has been under daily shelling from Russian troops since Ukrainian forces liberated the city in November 2022.
Russian forces were then pushed back to the other side of the Dnipro river, putting Kherson well within reach of Russian artillery stationed on the opposite bank.
Russian troops are on the offensive again, especially in the eastern Donbas region, where they captured two small villages near the city of Pokrovsk.