Ukraine's capital hit by Russian missiles after cyberattack

Volodymyr Verbianyi and Olesia Safronova, Bloomberg News on Dec 20, 2024

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Ukraine’s capital faced a Russian missile attack for the first time in almost a month, a day after Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin offered to hold talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

The strikes targeting Kyiv killed one person and injured at least nine others, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Friday on his Telegram channel. Buildings in four residential areas of the city as well as a warehouse and business center were damaged by falling debris, Kyiv city’s military administration said.

Air defenses downed all five ballistic missiles fired at Kyiv as well as 40 drones targeting other regions of the country, Ukraine’s Air Force command said on Telegram.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Telegram that the attack was in retaliation for a Ukrainian strike in Russia’s Rostov region on Wednesday involving ATACMS long-range missiles and Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Kyiv’s Western allies. It claimed to have been targeting a design bureau involved in missile development, a Ukrainian security service command post and the positions of Patriot air-defense systems.

The attack damaged a building housing several foreign embassies, including those of Argentina and Portugal, according to the spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry. No casualties among embassy employees were reported. The attack drew indignation from the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

The barrage followed a major cyberattack by Russian hackers against Ukraine’s state registries, the country’s authorities said. As a result, a number of digital services ranging from real estate registration to online marriage registration were disabled. While no data was lost, authorities said, restoring it may take as long as two weeks. Russian authorities so far haven’t commented on the cyberattack.

The assault came after Putin said at his annual news conference in Moscow on Thursday that he’s willing to meet with Trump, who has said he wants to bring an end to the war even before he returns to the White House on Jan. 20. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday he’d welcome the prospect of Trump initiating an effort to end Russia’s war, but cautioned against a cease-fire agreement that could easily unravel.

The cyberattack and the missile barrage against Kyiv followed the assassination in Moscow on Tuesday of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, in a bomb explosion. Russian investigators accused Ukrainian security services of plotting the killing.

—With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski.