Russia says Ukrainian strike with US-supplied missiles killed six people

A Ukrainian attack on Friday on a town in Russia’s Kursk border region using US-supplied missiles killed six people, including a child, a senior local official said.

The attack came hours after Ukrainian authorities said a Russian ballistic missile strike on Kyiv killed at least one person and wounded 13.

Moscow claimed the Kyiv strike was in response to a Ukrainian strike on Russian soil using American-made weapons earlier this week.

Ten other people in the Kursk town of Rylsk, including a 13-year-old, were taken to hospital after Friday’s strike with HIMARS missiles, Kursk acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said. He provided no further details.

The truck-mounted HIMARS launchers fire GPS-guided missiles capable of hitting targets up to 80km (50 miles) away. The mobile launchers are hard for the enemy to spot and can quickly change position after firing to escape airstrikes.

US President Joe Biden last month authorised Ukraine to use US-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons. The move was a response to Russia deploying thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war effort, officials said.

Shortly before sunrise on Friday, at least three loud blasts were heard in Kyiv. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted five Iskander short-range ballistic missiles fired at the city.

The attack knocked out heating to 630 residential buildings, 16 medical facilities and 30 schools and kindergartens, the city administration said.

Falling missile debris caused damage and sparked fires in three districts.

“We ask citizens to immediately respond to reports of ballistic attack threats, because there is very little time to find shelter,” the air force said.

During the nearly three years since the war began, Russia has regularly bombarded civilian areas of Ukraine, often in an attempt to cripple the power grid and unnerve Ukrainians.

Ukraine, struggling to hold back Russia’s bigger army on the front line, has attempted to strike Russian infrastructure supporting the country’s war effort.

The falling debris in Kyiv caused damage to around two dozen high-rise office buildings in the city centre as well as the landmark Catholic Church of St Nicholas and the Kyiv National Linguistic University.

What may have been the blast wave from an intercepted low-flying missile also blew out windows and caused other damage at six embassies, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

About five hours later, air raid sirens rang out again. Valeriia Dubova, 32, a photographer, took cover with many others in a crowded underground station.

“You could see that many buildings, high-rises, were damaged, with glass shards on the ground, far from the explosion epicentre,” she said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that the strike was in response to a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Rostov border region two days earlier.

That attack used six American-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, missiles and four Storm Shadow air-launched missiles provided by the UK, it said.

That day, Ukraine claimed to have targeted a Rostov oil refinery as part of its campaign to strike Russian infrastructure supporting the country’s war effort.

The use of Western-supplied weapons to strike Russia has angered the Kremlin. Ukraine fired several American-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia for the first time on November 19 after Washington eased restrictions on their use.

That development prompted Russia to use a new hypersonic missile, called Oreshnik, for the first time. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the missile could be used to target government buildings in Kyiv, though there have been no reports of an Oreshnik being used for a second time.

Answering the Ukrainian attack on Rostov on Wednesday, the Russian Defence Ministry said that the military carried out a group strike with “high-precision, long-range weapons” on the command centre of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and another location where it said Ukraine’s Neptune missile systems are designed and produced.

The attack also targeted Ukrainian ground-based cruise missile systems and US-made Patriot air defence systems, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

“The objectives of the strike have been achieved. All objects are hit,” the ministry said in a Telegram post.

Its claims could not immediately be verified.

In other Russian attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine, six people, including a 15-year-old girl, were injured by missiles in Kryvyi Rih, regional authorities said. It was the second straight night of attacks in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town.

Also, Russian artillery shelled the southern city of Kherson on Friday morning, causing widespread damage and leaving around 60,000 people without power, regional governor Olesksandr Prokudin said.