Russia hit an airbase in western Ukraine, damaging five aircraft and the runway, and targeted the nation’s capital with ballistic missiles in the second massive rocket and drone attack in as many days.
Rescue teams worked to extinguish a fire at the air base in the Khmelnytskyi region, where a fuel dump and military storage were hit along with the aircraft and runway, the regional governor’s office said on Telegram.
Air defense forces in Kyiv shot down 11 Iskander ballistic missiles on Monday morning, spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on television, an exhibit of Ukraine’s improved capabilities to fend off airstrikes. It was the 16th attack on the capital since May 1.
Russia has ramped up air strikes on military facilities and infrastructure across the country this month, as Ukraine prepares a counteroffensive to try to take back territory occupied by the invading forces.
Russia is “trying to exhaust our air defenses,” Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, said on Telegram.
As air sirens blared in Kyiv and local television showed screaming schoolchildren running for bomb shelters, Ukrainian authorities said more Russian rockets were raining down elsewhere across the country.
Debris from intercepted missiles fell on five locations in Kyiv without causing major damage, authorities said. One person was hospitalized.
The ballistic attack on Kyiv followed an overnight barrage in which Ukrainian forces shot down more than 37 cruise missiles and 30 drones, according to Kyiv’s General Staff of the Armed Forces. Russia said it had struck airfields, aircraft, radio surveillance and command posts, according to a report from the RIA Novosti news service that couldn’t immediately be verified.
The interception of the Iskanders illustrates the bolstering of Ukrainian air defenses, with newly donated weapons from international partners, including long-range Patriot anti-aircraft batteries.
As recently as a month ago, Ukraine struggled to shoot down the missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads and killed dozens of civilians and devastated entire apartment blocks carrying conventional explosive payloads earlier in the war.
When asked whether Patriots had down the Iskanders, Ihnat, the air-defense spokesman said “if we are shooting them down, we have something that is able to do it.”
The morning drone and missile strikes targeted regions from Mykolayiv in central Ukraine to Lviv in the west. A strike in the Kharkiv region wounded four women and two children, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram.