Russia Resumes Missile Strikes on Ukraine

On Wednesday, Russia significantly intensified its missile strikes against Ukraine, launching a barrage aimed at the capital, Kyiv, and a northeastern border region. This marked the end of a more than two-month hiatus in such attacks on the capital, according to the Ukrainian air force.

The renewed missile bombardment coincided with Russian forces pushing to leverage their numerical superiority in soldiers and firepower along the eastern front. On the same day, Ukraine’s military reported a series of aerial bombings targeting its troops in a strategically important pocket of Russian-held territory near the northern border, which had been captured the previous summer.

As air raid sirens blared in Kyiv around 6 a.m., prompting civilians to seek refuge in hallways or basements, the Ukrainian air force indicated it was monitoring 96 aerial targets entering the nation’s airspace. This included various missiles, which ended a rare 73-day pause in Russia’s missile strikes against both civilian and military targets in the capital city.

The air force confirmed that four missiles were specifically directed at Kyiv, while two short-range missiles targeted the northeastern border area. During this period of relative calm, the city had been subjected to numerous drone attacks. In fact, the air force reported that a substantial number of drones were deployed in Wednesday’s assault.

Throughout Ukraine, the past several months have been characterized by an unusual lull in large-scale missile attacks. The last major missile strike occurred on September 3, when a devastating attack on a military academy in the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava resulted in the tragic loss of more than 50 lives.