In the northern residential suburb of Vynohradar, a district of modest apartment blocks, residents were quietly and calmly salvaging, clearing, and dealing with what remained of their apartments after Monday night’s massive missile attack on Kyiv. Dozens of rockets and hundreds of drones had been unleashed on the city, leaving five people dead.
Aftermath in Vynohradar
Residents’ possessions had avalanched out of one building, lying in heaps at its base. Shattered glass lay in flowerbeds among irises and roses. Locals came clutching lengths of plastic sheeting to cover blown-out windows, with supplies handed out at a local aid point set up in a nearby school.
Damage at UNIT.City
In UNIT.City, a new residential and office development near Babyn Yar, the memorial to Jewish victims of the Second World War, the glazing of modern glass-fronted blocks was almost entirely blown out. Chestnut trees were stripped of their leaves by blast waves. Cars were smashed and strewn with fallen branches. Residents heaved piles of broken glass and rubble to a skip and installed plywood sheets where windows had been.
Nationwide Attack
The wave of attacks targeted multiple Ukrainian cities, killing at least 12 people in Dnipro and six in Kyiv, and wounding 131 others. Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired 73 missiles and 656 drones nationwide.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated Moscow’s air campaign in recent weeks, apparently trying to exploit Ukraine’s shortage of US-made air defence systems, exacerbated by the Iran war, and to convince an increasingly pessimistic domestic audience that Moscow is prevailing in the four-year war. The Kremlin had previously threatened “systematic” strikes against Kyiv and urged foreign nationals to leave.
Calls for More Air Defences
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday called for more air defences, calling the attack “an explicit statement by Russia.” He added that if Ukraine is “not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue.”
Russia has been relentlessly attacking Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, since its full-scale invasion in 2022. This was the third heavy assault on the capital in under a month, and Kyiv appeared to be the main target. Kyiv’s defences stop most drones, but the city remains vulnerable to missiles. Thousands took shelter in the Kyiv subway system, some carrying pets, belongings, and mattresses.
US-brokered talks on the war have stalled, but Russian advances on the battlefield have slowed, and Kyiv has stepped up strikes on Russian oil refineries.
