Kyiv Post reporters in the capital were jarred awake by yet another round of explosions early Thursday morning, about 24 hours after what was described as the largest air strike on Ukraine in the history of the three-year-plus invasion.
As of 5:20 a.m. local time, 12 civilians were reported injured in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported on Telegram. He said in earlier dispatches that multiple residential buildings had been hit.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, warned of a “threat of enemy use of ballistic weapons,” while the Ukrainian Air Force reported that “a group of missiles is approaching Kyiv from the east.”
Several fires broke out at apartment buildings, as well as at a gas station, due to falling debris from drones, Klitschko said. Emergency workers were on the scene to extinguish the flames on the top floor of one of those residential apartment buildings, in the Shevchenkivskyi district.
There have been social media reports of destruction from Iskander missiles.
The attacks come just days after US President Donald Trump reversed course on sending arms to Ukraine and said more air defenses will be sent soon.
“This is a telling attack and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media after the Wednesday morning attacks.
In that barrage, Ukrainian Air Force said its air defense operators had shot down 711 of the 728 incoming drones and seven of 13 missiles. Previously, the largest number of incoming drones and missiles recorded by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) was 550, and that was just last week.
Editor’s note: This a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available.