Russian missile strike on Kiev sends civilians to cover

Even in a city where people have adapted the routines of ordinary life to wartime, the spectacle that unfolded in Kiev on Monday was a reminder that although the fighting has concentrated hundreds of kilometers to the east, the Ukrainian capital has still taken a Russian shot in the has rose. It.

Ballistic missiles started roaring shortly after 11 a.m.—a rare daytime barrage that sent townspeople running for cover—and were swiftly shot down. But the strike made it clear that even as Kiev, aided by Western allies, builds up its air defense system, Russian forces intend to test for weak spots.

They have changed the timing of bombings, the combination of weapons used and the trajectories of missiles and drones, and lately have flown them low along riverbeds and through valleys to avoid detection, Ukrainian officials say.

Russia is trying to “confuse and mislead our air defense system,” Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, said during an appearance on national television over the weekend. “It uses the topography of the area to disappear from radars.”

On Monday, 11 ballistic missiles were aimed at Ukraine and 11 were intercepted, according to Ukrainian officials. But debris from the mid-air collisions caused fires and other damage, as terrified Ukrainians looked to the clear blue sky of their densely populated city to witness a battle unfold with explosive force.

Schoolchildren carrying backpacks on their shoulders ran terrified after the explosions echoed on a city street, a video widely shared by Ukrainian officials on social media.

“How they cried, how they screamed!” said Natalia Nevidoma, 53, who was cleaning the porch of a restaurant as teachers guided small children past the entrance. “You know, it’s so painful and scary.”

There were no known deaths and only one injured reported from the rocket bombing, but it led to an immediate condemnation from the Ukrainian government. According to Serhii Popko, the head of Kiev’s regional military administration, Russian troops “hit a peaceful city during the day, while most of the inhabitants were at work and on the streets.

“In other words,” Popko said, “the Russians are clearly showing that they want to destroy the civilian population.”

Russian officials have often denied targeting civilian areas. They said Monday’s attacks targeted air bases, and Ukrainian officials said Moscow had hit at least one military installation, damaging an airfield in Khmelnytskyi, western Ukraine. “Five aircraft have been taken out of service,” the Khmelnytskyi regional military administration said in a statement.

The increased attacks on Kiev in recent weeks rival those during some of the war’s most terrifying moments for the city of 3.6 million. In Kiev, as elsewhere in Ukraine, Moscow has been steadily deploying attack drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, Ukrainian officials say. On Sunday, Ukrainian air defense teams repelled Russia’s largest drone attack on Kiev since the start of the war.

Kiev was not the only target on Monday.

The the Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had fired up to 40 cruise missiles and 35 Iranian-made attack drones before dawn on Monday. It said 37 of the missiles and 29 of the drones had been shot down. But a missile hit a village in the Kharkiv region, Kivsharivka, injuring at least three people, according to the local military administration.

In Kiev, emergency services were dispatched to extinguish fires caused by falling debris. The Kiev Regional Military Administration said it was in the process of clearing at least six sites around the capital, including a major roadway.

Kseniia Khyzhniak, 35, had been using her day off to catch up on a TV series when the sirens sent her to her children’s school.

“I look at the sky and the air defense missile is flying there,” Ms Khyzhniak said. There was a bang and then another as her two young children ran to meet her and ran hand in hand toward the shelter, she said.

“Hurry!” Ukrainians standing at the entrance shouted and waved them in, she said.

Oleksandr, 40, a tech worker who declined to give his last name, said he, too, was heading for a shelter — even though he wasn’t quite sure what the point was.

“Getting hit by a car and dying is more likely in Kiev right now than dying from shelling, mathematically speaking,” he said. “But I can’t command my body how to react, you know?”

Anatolii Semenov, a 68-year-old retiree at home, was more philosophical.

“I didn’t go to the shelter,” he said. “I never do. There’s a Ukrainian saying: ‘What must be, must be.’ My father taught me that.”