Two loud explosions were heard in central Kiev on Saturday morning by AFP journalists, who also saw trails in the sky, shortly before air raid sirens sounded.
“Loud explosions were heard on the left bank of the capital. According to initial information, the air defenses worked against ballistic weapons,” Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. So far there are no reports of injuries, he added.
The attack came after a long period of calm in the Ukrainian capital.
On September 21, air defenses shot down a missile in Kiev. The falling debris injured seven people, including a child.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Ukraine has deployed more Western air defense systems said Tuesday as it prepares for a winter of Russian attacks on energy facilities, like those that left thousands of people freezing for long periods without heat or electricity last year.
Ukraine says it shot down about two-thirds of 31 Russian Shahed-136/131 attack drones launched overnight, mostly from front-line areas and which also targeted Kiev.
The missile fired on Kiev but put an end to almost two months of relative calm for the Ukrainian capital.
“After a long pause of 52 days, the enemy resumed its missile attacks on Kiev,” the head of the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on Telegram. Sergiy Popko. Asked why the alarm was raised only after the explosion, an air force spokesman said on television that “ballistic missiles fly extremely fast and are not as visible on radar as cruise missiles.”
The Ukrainian Air Force is trying to establish whether the capital was targeted by an Iskander ballistic missile or an S-400 anti-aircraft missile.
Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in an interview with Politico that “it would be right” to target Russian oil and gas infrastructure if Ukraine’s electricity grid again found itself in the crosshairs of massive attacks.
On the field, Ukrainian soldiers face Russian assaults around the city of Avdiivka on the front line, but “firmly hold” their positions in this sector of the east of the country, assured the commander of the Ukrainian army Oleksandr Tarnavskyi.
In 6 regions, thousands without power after Russian raids
The launches of missiles and drones by the Russians on Ukraine have left six regions of the country partially without electricity, according to what the UNIAN agency writes, citing the Kiev Energy Ministry. The regions are those of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kherson and the users left without electricity are several thousand in each of them.