Explosions, fires reported in Kyiv amid Russian missile attack
on Google
Russia once again unleashed a barrage of ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv overnight on June 28, damaging several sites in the city and injuring at least two people, officials said.
Explosions were first reported in Kyiv just before 2 a.m. local time, according to a Kyiv Independent journalist on the ground, and then again around 2:35 a.m. amid another wave of missiles.
Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said that at least two people were injured in the Darnytskyi district of the city amid the attack.
Fires were also reported in the neighborhood, including near a residential building and at a service station and an unspecified "non-residential building."
A garage unit and vehicles in an open area were engulfed in a fire covering 300 square meters, the State Emergency Service later reported. The fire had been extinguished.
Ukraine's Air Force warned of the threat of several Russian missiles flying towards the capital. Air raid alerts were activated in the central and eastern regions of the country.
Local officials said air defenses were active over Kyiv. Photos and videos posted to social media purport to show several missiles being intercepted over the capital.
Elsewhere across the country, explosions were heard in the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv, public broadcaster Suspilne reported.
Days earlier, on June 25, Russian forces launched a limited missile attack against Kyiv, injuring two people.
Russia's most recent large-scale attack on Kyiv came on June 15, when a massive combined attack killed five people and left the historic Kyiv Pechersk Lavra in flames.
Kyiv responded with unprecedented attacks on Moscow, hitting the Russian capital and its main oil refinery with waves of drones on June 16 and 18. The June 18 strike was the largest drone attack on Moscow during the full-scale war.
As Russian troops' gains on the front line have stalled, Moscow has increasingly relied on ballistic missiles to inflict maximum damage in large-scale aerial strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine's ability to protect its cities from Russian ballistic missiles depends heavily on its dwindling supply of Patriot interceptors — ammunition for the U.S.-made air defense system that remains the only weapon to have proven effective against ballistic threats.
