Russian missiles pummel Ukraine cities
11 reported killed as concerns over air defenses grow
KYIV — Russia launched a combination of cruise and ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities Tuesday in a large volley that killed at least 11 people and injured an additional 88, including 10 children, according to local authorities. The assault added to concerns about the state of Ukraine’s air defenses as Russian barrages continue on its largest cities.
Ukraine’s air force said that 41 missiles had entered the country’s airspace early Tuesday. Ukrainian authorities provide details of cruise missiles in flight, and residents can track them for about an hour as they fly from Russia. The ballistic missiles, which travel much faster, struck in Kyiv on Tuesday just as the cruise missiles arrived.
Yuriy Ihnat, an air force spokesperson, said in a telephone interview that the military had intercepted only about half of the total barrage and just five of the 24 ballistic missiles. That was a lower success rate for Ukraine than achieved against earlier bombardments, because ballistic missiles, which are harder to intercept, made up a higher proportion of Tuesday’s volley, he said.
Most of the missiles “were ballistic, and our air force can’t down them all,” Ihnat said.
In Kyiv, the capital, at least one missile appeared to detonate at ground level, residents said, although it was unclear whether it had evaded Ukraine’s air defenses or whether the warhead fell and blew up after the missile was destroyed in the air.
Concern has grown in Ukraine that air defense ammunition will run low as further military aid from the United States remains stalled in Congress. Ihnat said that the air force had not run out of ammunition in Tuesday’s assault but that Ukraine did require a regular resupply.
He also said that not all of the missiles that evaded Ukraine’s defenses had hit their targets. “Many of them just fell in the fields, as Russian missiles’ quality has decreased,” he said.
Residents of the capital awoke to an air raid alarm around 6 a.m., followed by explosions and the rattle of machine guns firing at the cruise missiles. Missiles or falling debris struck five neighborhoods in Kyiv, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. Police strung red tape around strike sites, and emergency workers cleared bricks and broken glass from the streets.
One explosion from either falling debris or a missile rang out in the government district in central Kyiv, near the presidential office and parliament. It was the first damage from a missile attack in the district since October 2022.
In the city’s Sviatoshynsky district, an older man stood on the street, shaking and crying, after watching wounded children being evacuated from one strike site. “Their entire bodies were bandaged,” said the man, who declined to give his name. He struggled to say anything more. Cars caught fire on a street in one district. Klitschko wrote on the Telegram social messaging app that a warhead from one intercepted missile had landed in a resident’s kitchen but did not explode.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, missiles killed two people and wounded at least 38, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, wrote on Telegram.
Missiles hit at least four locations in the city, whose center is just 25 miles from the Russian border — the first strikes around 4 a.m. and another salvo three hours later, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said in a brief interview at the site of one of the strikes.
As Russia pressed ahead with its assaults on Ukraine, NATO officials in Brussels said Tuesday the military alliance had signed contracts worth $1.2 billion to buy 155 mm caliber artillery shells — one of the most-needed weapons on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The estimated 220,000 shells will not be delivered for at least two years, officials said, and will be sent to member states to refill stockpiles that have been depleted by military assistance to Ukraine. It will be up to NATO states to decide whether they can spare more for Kyiv.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a battle for ammunition,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general.
Officials did not say which ammunition producers — whether based in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere — would manufacture the shells.