Sawt Falasteen - Russian missile barrage on Kyiv kills one, damages diplomatic missions

Moscow said it attacked Ukraine as retaliation for a strike using Western missiles on a chemical plant in Russia earlier in the week.

Russian aerial attacks regularly target the capital but rarely cause damage of that scale as Kyiv is well protected by air defence, nearly three years into Russia's invasion.

"There were explosions after explosions in a row," said 45-year-old Ksenia, who was staying at a hotel near the site of a wreckage.

The air force said it downed all five Iskander missiles Russia launched at the capital, but that debris caused damage in several districts.

The strikes killed a 53-year-old man and wounded 12 people, most suffering from shrapnel injuries, the city's administration said.

They also damaged a building housing the diplomatic missions of Albania, Argentina, Palestine, North Macedonia, Portugal and Montenegro, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said.

"These are barbaric attacks on diplomatic institutions, this is crossing all possible red lines and international rules," foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy was quoted as saying by Ukrainian agency Interfax.

In the absence of the Russian ambassador in Lisbon, the chargé d'affaires of the Russian Federation has been summoned to be presented with a formal protest, the Portuguese government said.

The building of the Kyiv National Linguistics University was also impacted, according to the institution's Instagram account, which posted photos of a main campus building whose windows had been completely blown out, glass shards covering the floor.

- 'People start running' -

Victoria, a 35-year-old doctor, had come out to look at the charred cars and buildings with blown-out windows at the site of an attack.

"Russians should burn in hell," she said.

Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said Ukraine Patriot air defence systems had been deployed 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 centre in the city centre."

Moscow claimed responsibility for the overnight attack on Ukraine, carried out a day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin 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 spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

His comment came soon after the Russian defence 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 defence industry site, and that "all the targets have been struck".

- 'Dumbass' -

Putin at a press conference on Thursday had suggested a "high-tech duel" over Kyiv to test his claims that Russia's new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik, is impervious to air defences.

"Let them set some target to be hit, let's say in Kyiv," he said.

"They will concentrate there all their air defences. 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 war-torn Ukraine, which has faced nearly daily aerial attacks for almost three years.

Russian attacks also killed two people in Ukraine's southern city of Kherson Friday.

"Today Kherson woke up from numerous strikes of the Russian army. The occupants have created hell in the city," governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Prokudin also said shelling had left 60,000 homes without electricity in the Kherson region, which has been under daily strikes since Ukraine liberated the city in November 2022.

Russian forces were then pushed back to the other side of the Dnipro river, putting Kherson well within reach of Russian artillery stationed on the opposite bank.

A Russian sabotage group tried but failed to cross the Dnipro during the shelling of Kherson, spokesman for the Southern Defence Forces Vladyslav Voloshyn told state-run Suspilne media.

R.AbuNasser--SF-PST