Russian Ballistic Missiles Strike Kyiv Warehouses Late at Night, Killing One

Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv late on Thursday, October 29, hitting warehouse buildings in the Darnytskyi district on the east side of the Dnipro River and setting them on fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. A new missile attack hit districts of the capital just before 11 p.m. local time, 2100 GMT, killing one person, the Kyiv City Military Administration said, according to Reuters. Reuters witnesses in the city reported hearing explosions.

Fire in two left bank districts

Klitschko said warehouse buildings in Darnytskyi caught fire as a result of the impact and that emergency services were on their way to the scene. In the neighboring Dniprovskyi district, rocket debris was burning in the courtyard of a residential complex, and the blast wave shattered windows in a nearby house, with emergency services at the scene, Kyiv1 reported from the mayor's statements. The public broadcaster Suspilne reported that air raid sirens sounded repeatedly in the capital overnight, Sweden Herald reported.

A day of strikes across Ukraine

The Kyiv attack closed a day of Russian strikes that killed at least 20 people across Ukraine, according to Reuters. On Thursday morning a Russian jet powered drone struck a crowded platform at the main railway station in Dnipro, killing at least 14 people. Another attack on Dnipro hit a student dormitory and set it ablaze, and a day of assaults cut power to 350,000 households in the city, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said. Two teenage girls were killed in Chernihiv, where 23 people were wounded, and three people were killed in strikes on residential buildings in Kremenchuk. Russian drones also struck city buses in three separate attacks in Zaporizhzhia, wounding six people, officials there said.

Warnings of more strikes

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the day's attacks as very cruel and as deliberate at a moment when de-escalation steps were expected, and he warned that Ukraine had intelligence about Russian preparations for new ballistic missile strikes. "We need the means to take out all this Russian evil. We are expecting relevant decisions," he said, according to Reuters. Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi said on Telegram: "Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings." The Kyiv Independent reported that Zelensky said Russia has launched more than 100 ballistic missiles against Kyiv and the surrounding region since October 14, and that the blackouts form part of a Russian campaign against power plants, substations and gas infrastructure. The strikes came while a six day local truce in the southern Kherson region, brokered with United States help to allow a humanitarian mission into the Russian held town of Oleshky, remained in place. Reuters reported that new three way talks on the war are expected next month.