Russia sent a barrage of missiles to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at sunrise on Friday, December 20, killing at least one person and cutting heating to hundreds of residential buildings in cold temperatures.
The air force said it downed all five Iskander missiles Russia launched at the capital, but that debris caused damage in five districts. The strikes killed a 53-year-old man and wounded 11 people, most suffering from shrapnel wounds, the police said.
It also cut heating to 630 residential buildings, as well as a dozen of medical clinics and schools. Six diplomatic missions to Kyiv were damaged, also, Ukraine's foreign ministry said. The ministry said that the Albanian, Argentine, North Macedonian, Palestinian, Portuguese and Montenegrin missions were damaged.
Moscow said it attacked Ukraine as retaliation for a strike using Western missiles on a chemical plant in Russia earlier in the week.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the strikes. "Another heinous Russian attack against Kyiv," she posted on X in response. "Putin's disregard for international law reaches new heights."
Air force spokesperson Yuriy Ignat said Ukraine Patriot air defense systems to shoot down the missiles. The Ukrainian think tank Defence Express said "all the missiles were successfully intercepted, but in one case, the warhead failed to be destroyed and it exploded near a business center in the city center."
Moscow claimed responsibility for the overnight attack on Ukraine, which came a day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin had threatened to strike Kyiv. "You know that such strikes on Russian territory have been carried out, and you know that the president has said that every time there will be a response," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
His comment came soon after the Russian defense ministry said that "in response to the actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its Western handlers, a combined strike with long-range precision weapons was launched today." The ministry said it had targeted an office of the SBU security service and a defense industry site and that "all the targets have been struck."
Putin at a press conference on Thursday had suggested a "hi-tech duel" over Kyiv to test his claims that Russia's new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik, is impervious to air defenses. "Let them set some target to be hit, let's say in Kyiv," he said. "They will concentrate there all their air defenses. And we will launch an Oreshnik strike there and see what happens."
Zelensky hit back, saying, "People are dying and he thinks it's 'interesting.' Dumbass."
Putin's statement was the latest in a series of threats aimed at increasing pressure on the war-torn country, which has faced nearly daily aerial attacks for almost three years.