Russia Launches a Rare Daytime Missile Attack on Kyiv (Published 2023) (2024)

The midmorning attack sent Kyiv residents rushing for shelter.

So far, Ukrainian air defenses, reinforced by Western weapons, have largely thwarted the aerial attacks on Kyiv, limiting casualties and damages in the highly populated area. All 11 missiles directed at the capital on Monday were shot down, Ukrainian officials said. Falling debris caused some damage in various parts of the city, and information about possible casualties was still being clarified, the authorities said.

The daytime attack came just six hours after the night attack, Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said in a statement. After weeks of nighttime attacks, Mr. Popko said, Russian forces “struck a peaceful city during the day, when most of the residents were at work and on the streets.”

Rescue and fire crews were later dispatched to put out fires caused by falling debris that landed on a major roadway in the capital. The Kyiv regional military administration said it was working to clear debris from at least six locations around the city.

As Kyiv builds up its air defense systems, Russia appears to be continuously testing them. Russian forces have been changing the timings of bombardments, the combination of weapons they use and the trajectories of the missiles and drones, most recently flying them low along riverbeds and through valleys to avoid detection.

With those adjustments, Russian forces are trying to “confuse and mislead our air defense system,” Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, said in an appearance on national television over the weekend. “It uses the topography of the area to disappear from radars.”

“But as we can see, the Ukrainian air defense is getting stronger and stronger every day,” he added.

On Sunday, Ukrainian air defense teams repelled Russia’s largest drone attack on the city since the start of the war. Less than 18 hours later, another overnight attack followed.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russian forces had fired a total of 40 cruise missiles and 38 Iranian-made attack drones on Monday, and that 36 of the missiles and 30 of the drones had been shot down.

One missile hit the village of Kivsharivka in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the local military administration. It said at least three people were wounded in the attack.

The Russian overnight assault did hit at least one military installation, according to Ukrainian officials, damaging an airfield located in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine.

“Five aerial vehicles went out of service,” the Khmelnytskyi Regional Military Administration said in a statement. It said rescue crews were racing to put out fires at a fuel depot and warehouse at the base. “Restoration works also started at the runway,” the administration said.

Hours after those strikes, air alarms sounded again in several regions of Ukraine. Millions across the capital, still reeling from the consecutive nights of bombardment, watched as air defense missiles launched into the clear blue spring sky.

The residents of Kyiv — a city of 3.6 million people — paused, braced and waited. When the blasts subsided, residents of the capital did as they have done after every attack — posted messages on social media thanking air defense teams, texted their friends and proceeded to go about their business.

Nataliia Novosolova and Tiffany May contributed reporting.

Russian strikes damage at least one airfield in western Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his nightly address, suggested that he and his commanders had decided on a date to start the long-awaited counteroffensive, though he gave no details. “We have approved the dates for the start of the movement of our troops, the decisions have been made,” he said. “I thank the brigades that prepared for this.”

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russian forces had fired a total of 40 cruise missiles and 38 Iranian-made attack drones on Monday, and that 36 of the missiles and 30 of the drones had been shot down.

One missile hit the village of Kivsharivka in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the local military administration. It said at least three people were wounded in the attack.

At the same time, air raid alarms sounded in other cities and towns across the country Monday morning as Russia continued to target Ukrainian forces preparing for a long anticipated counteroffensive.

In the southern port city of Odesa, the local military administration said debris from a downed drone had fallen on port infrastructure and set off a small fire that was quickly extinguished.

Casualties from artillery shells and bombs were reported in other places. In the Kherson region, shelling killed a 61-year-old man in his house in the village of Kozatske, local officials said on social media.

Two people were also killed and eight were injured during a Russian airstrike in the city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, the prosecutor general’s office reported. Ukrainian officials said the strike appeared to be carried out with guided bombs dropped from an aircraft.

One of the bombs hit the local gas station, killing a 28-year-old worker and injuring six women and two men, the prosecutor’s office said in a bulletin on Telegram. A second bomb fell on the administrative building, injuring a local resident who later died in an ambulance.

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‘How they cried, how they screamed’: Kyiv residents describe the terror of yet another attack.

“Do you understand this is a complete horror? Every night! Every day!” she said, speaking in Russian. She said she had been cleaning the restaurant’s front porch as teachers led small children past the entrance. “How they cried, how they screamed!” when the explosions sounded, she said. “You know, it’s so painful and scary.”

“I have relatives in Moscow. I don’t communicate with them at all,” she added. “I will never forgive them. And my kids will never forgive.”

All 11 missiles directed at Kyiv were shot down, Ukrainian officials said Monday, adding that falling debris had done some damage in various parts of the city.

Kseniia Khyzhniak, 35, had been using her day off work to catch up on a TV series when the air raid sirens sounded and sent her racing to her children’s school in the southern part of the city. Students were already running for shelters when she arrived, she said.

“I’m looking at the sky — and the air defense rocket is flying there,” she said. There was one bang, then another as her two young children ran to meet her.

“We’re not going home, but going together to the shelter,” she said she told them. They held hands and ran as more explosions blasted overhead, and people at the shelter entrance waved them in, screaming, “Hurry up!”

The mid-morning attack came just hours after an overnight aerial assault, in which Russia unleashed cruise missiles and attack drones over the city.

Anatolii sem*nov, 68, who is retired, was at home when he saw flashes of light in the night. “I didn’t go to the shelter — I never do,” he said. “There is a Ukrainian saying: ‘What has got to be has got to be.’ My father taught me that.”

But Oleksandr, 40, a tech worker who declined to provide his last name, said he headed to his basem*nt for shelter when the sirens sounded mid-morning.

“Getting hit by the car and dying is more probable in Kyiv at the moment than dying of shelling. Mathematically,” he said. “But I can’t order my body how to react, you know?”

He stayed in the basem*nt for about an hour, emerging when the all clear was given. A few hours later, while he was doing a supermarket run, the air-raid sirens sounded again.

— Natalia Yermak and Enjoli Liston

Kenya announces it will sign a new trade deal with Russia.

Mr. Lavrov arrived on Monday in the East African nation for a surprise visit, during which he was expected to discuss collaboration on several issues, including trade, education and cultural affairs, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. Mr. Ruto also said that Kenya and the African continent were counting on Russia to support their bid to have a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

“The continent can bring to the table rich ideas, suggestions and experiences that would serve the globe well,” Mr. Ruto said.

Mr. Lavrov’s trip was the latest tour that Russia’s top diplomat has made to Africa, part of his work to drum up support for Moscow as it squared off with Western powers 15 months after the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Over the past year, Mr. Lavrov has made official visits to various African countries to shore up Russian influence on the continent, including Egypt, Uganda, Eritrea and the Republic of Congo.

The Kenyan presidency said Mr. Lavrov was on his way to a meeting of the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China — formally known as the BRICS — who were meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. In Moscow, Mr. Lavrov has also recently received leaders from African countries, including Uganda and Somalia.

His trip also came just a week after Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, visited several African countries, including Morocco, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Mozambique, and implored African countries not to remain neutral over the war in Ukraine. Much of the continent has refrained from joining economic sanctions against Russia or condemning the invasion of Ukraine last year.

Russia has relations with many African nations that stretch back to the Cold War, and in recent years, it has provided military and security support to several leaders while expanding its economic footprint.

Moscow has invested heavily in promoting its image in Africa through media investments and disinformation. The Russian mercenary force Wagner has also spread its influence across the continent. Last week, the U.S. Treasury said the group was supplying the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan with surface-to-air missiles to fight against the Sudanese army, protracting the conflict in the northeast African nation.

But even as Russia pushed the narrative that it was a natural ally to African countries, it threatened to withdraw from a deal exporting Ukrainian grain to international markets — a move that would have a severe impact on countries across the Horn of Africa that have experienced devastating drought and hunger.

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Blinken will meet with European leaders as Sweden pushes for NATO membership.

It was unclear, however, if Mr. Erdogan’s re-election on Sunday, guaranteeing him another five years in office, might clear a path for Sweden.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine congratulated Mr. Erdogan on his win late Sunday, saying, “We hope to develop our cooperation for the security and stability of Europe and further strengthen our strategic partnership for the benefit of our countries.”

Even if Sweden can convince Turkey, Hungary has its own grievances. Its government has been stung by Swedish criticism about the erosion of the rule of law under Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban. Mr. Orban is also an ally of Mr. Putin’s, and his country depends on Russia for energy.

In Lulea, Sweden, Mr. Blinken will meet with the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson. On Wednesday, he will travel to Oslo, where he will meet Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store to discuss preparations for the NATO meeting.

On Friday, Mr. Blinken will deliver a speech in Helsinki, Finland, in which he will “highlight all the ways in which Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been a strategic failure, and our continued efforts to support Ukraine’s defense of its territory, sovereignty, and democracy in pursuit of a just and durable peace,” according to a statement from his office.

— Traci Carl

Southern Ukraine is seen as a possible target for Kyiv’s counteroffensive.

Mr. Fedorov, who did not specify what caused the blast or what might have been hit, was forced to relocate from Melitopol after it was seized soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He says he receives information on what is happening inside the occupied city from Ukrainian residents who still live there. His report could not be independently confirmed.

In Berdiansk, a port city in the Zaporizhzhia region that is around 65 miles east of Melitopol, there were five explosions on Sunday, according to a report posted on Facebook by the city’s military administration, which is also in exile.

The volunteer group, Geoconfirmed, which uses software to pinpoint the location and timing of strikes in Ukraine and publishes the results on Twitter, said it could attest to the strikes. The New York Times has not verified the videos cited by Geoconfirmed.

The previous day, a major steel plant held by Russian forces in the port city of Mariupol, around 100 miles east of Melitopol, was targeted in an attack, according to the city’s Ukrainian council in exile. Mariupol was decimated in the spring of 2022 during a siege by Russian forces before it was occupied.

Ukraine rarely claims direct or explicit responsibility for strikes on Russian-occupied areas and Moscow rarely acknowledges losses.

Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said on national television on Sunday that the Storm Shadow missiles provided by Britain this month had achieved a 100 percent success rate in terms of striking a designated target. But the Russian Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that its forces had intercepted three Storm Shadow missiles and six HIMARS rockets the previous day. Both rocket systems are capable of striking targets deep behind Russian lines. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian claims could be independently verified.

The Ukrainian military has for months amassed weapons supplied by NATO allies and trained troops for the long-anticipated counteroffensive. In recent days, officials have signaled it might begin imminently — though military analysts have noted that in many ways the counteroffensive may already have begun.

“The time will soon come when we will move to active offensive actions,” Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said Monday in comments posted on Telegram.

While Ukrainian officials have remained tight-lipped about where the push will take place, military experts say that a logical target for Kyiv’s forces would be the front line around 60 miles north of the coast and east of the Dnipro River, as part of an effort to press south toward one of the three cities.

Melitopol, Berdiansk and Mariupol are crucial waypoints in a strip of land around 60 miles deep that is controlled by Russia and connects Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which it illegally annexed last fall.

They also serve as logistics hubs for Russian forces. Mariupol and Berdiansk are both at the end of lines on the Ukrainian railway system, while Melitopol’s railway station joins Crimea to the Donetsk region and continues into Russia.

Russia’s military relies on the railways to ferry supplies, reinforcements and troops to the frontline. Mr. Fedorov said in a recent interview that 70 percent of the traffic going through Melitopol’s railway supplies Crimea.

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West Germany may provide a model for admitting Ukraine to NATO.

As NATO’s yearly summit approaches in July, its members are discussing what they can offer Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who wants more concrete assurances that his country will join the alliance.

The West German model is gaining traction in some European capitals as a way to provide Ukraine real security, even if it does not immediately regain all its territory.

Germany is an example of NATO accepting a country with “significant and unresolved territorial issues” and a form of enemy occupation, said Angela E. Stent, an expert on Russia and Germany and author of “Putin’s World.”

“When West Germany joined NATO, there was what you could call a monumental frozen conflict,” she said. “And yet it was felt very important to anchor West Germany in the Western alliance, and so West Germany joined. The Russians complained about it and said it was very dangerous, but they were powerless to prevent it.”

A Russian deserter’s flight to Norway presents a fraught dilemma for his host.

“Yes, I have killed, I saw comrades die. It was war,” he said in an interview at an Oslo bar. “I have nothing to hide.”

His unlikely journey has made Mr. Medvedev one of only a handful of publicly known Russian combatants to seek protection in Europe after participating in the invasion. His asylum request is now forcing Norway to decide a case that pits the country’s humanitarian ethos against an increasingly assertive national security policy and solidarity with Ukraine.

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Barely noting the war in public, Putin acts like time is on his side.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Julian E. Barnes and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

The Russian public appears to be souring on war casualties, analysis shows.

— Julian E. Barnes

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The war has stolen the normal experiences of teenage life.

They slip past soldiers in full combat gear, carrying rifles and headed to the trenches about 20 miles away, and watch military trucks rumble past, kicking up clouds of dust. They are living their teenage years in a holding pattern because of the war that rages around them — without prom, graduation ceremonies, movie theaters, parties or sports.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused tremendous direct damage, killing tens of thousands of people and forcing millions of Ukrainians from their homes. But the war has also claimed another casualty: the normal experiences of teenagers like those in Sloviansk who live near combat zones, hanging out in ravaged cities where rockets fly in regularly.

“I wish I had an ordinary life,” said a 16-year-old named Mykyta.

His days, he said, have boiled down to walks with friends and playing video games in his room. “We studied this whole city; we know every corner,” Mykyta said. “It’s not so fun anymore.”

During a meandering walk around town on a recent afternoon, a half-dozen teenagers said they mostly handled the hardships of war, and the terror of Russian attacks, with humor — making fun of everything around them, including one another. They agreed to interviews on the condition that only their first names be used, to protect their privacy.