Kyiv —
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least a dozen people were killed and more than 30 injured in a “massive” Russian attack on Kiev starting Thursday and overnight.
According to local authorities, the airstrikes damaged hospitals, schools, homes and several warehouses in the city.
CNN producers in the Ukrainian capital heard several explosions and saw smoke visible over the city as air raid warnings continued for several hours.
Massive fires lit up the night sky over the capital, Reuters video showed.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced on Telegram that it had launched a “large-scale attack using high-precision weapons” against military installations, transport and logistics centers, and warehouses in the city of Kiev and its surrounding areas.
“Russia has been preparing for a long time and has combined various types of projectiles, cruise missiles and drones in order to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Rescuers rescued two people from the rubble and continued to deal with the aftermath of the attack, which damaged more than a dozen locations across the city, emergency services said. Firefighters were working to extinguish a large fire.
Klitschko said windows were broken at a children’s hospital in the Solomyansky district.
Timur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv region’s military administration, said a man from the Brovary district was among those killed.
Beyond Kiev, Zelenskiy said Russia also attacked gas infrastructure in the Chernihiv region and a border crossing with Moldova in the Odesa region.
During the attack on Ukraine, Romania’s Ministry of Defense announced that a Russian drone crashed on its territory and landed in a no-man’s land in Tulcea province, near the Ukrainian border, according to Reuters. Russian drones have repeatedly violated Romania’s airspace during the war.
Meanwhile, Poland has launched a preventive military air operation to protect its airspace during airstrikes, Reuters reported.
While Moscow attacks Ukraine almost every night, Kiev has also stepped up its offensive, launching more than 800 drones toward Russia on Sunday in one of the largest air attacks of the conflict.
Russia’s state-run TASS news agency said it was Ukraine’s biggest drone attack since the start of the year, with many of the drones targeting the Moscow region, where much of Russia’s elite lives.
On Tuesday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced that it had intercepted and destroyed 791 Ukrainian drones overnight in another major attack launched by Kiev.
