A series of explosions rang out in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Saturday morning, jolting residents from a relative quiet that had taken hold over the last two weeks during a festive holiday period. In a rare occurrence, some of the blasts were heard minutes before air-raid warnings sounded in the city.
The Russian attack most likely involved ballistic missiles fired from the north, which is why the air-raid warnings came late, according to Col. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force. Ballistic missiles are much harder to shoot down than either drones or cruise missiles.
The Ukrainian president’s office said the blasts were part of an “attack on critical infrastructure facilities” in the city. No casualties were immediately reported, but as the morning went on it became clear that a number of sites across the city had been hit.
The strikes shattered a relative morning calm as Ukraine was celebrating Orthodox New Year, or Malanka, a traditional holiday that is aligned with the older Julian calendar rather than the newer Gregorian one.
When the air-raid alert lifted at around 11:30 a.m., residents slowly made their way back out on the streets, with many streaming out of the subway stations in which they had sought shelter to continue on with their day.
Russian forces have intermittently targeted Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine far from the front lines since the start of October with large-scale missile and drone attacks that have mostly targeted electricity infrastructure and other key services.
The attacks have crippled Ukraine’s power grid and left the country grappling with rolling blackouts in order to deal with the electricity shortages.
The Kyiv military administration said on Telegram that rocket fragments had damaged a car and that debris had damaged a nonresidential building. The attack damaged 18 houses in the broader Kyiv region, the head of the local military administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, wrote on Telegram.
Kyiv wasn’t the only area of the country subject to Russian attacks on Saturday. Four missiles hit an industrial area in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said in a statement posted to Telegram. Mr. Terekhov said that the missiles targeted infrastructure sites and that information about casualties and damage were still being verified.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.
