KYIV, Ukraine — A series of explosions rang out in central Kyiv on Saturday morning, jolting city residents from a relative quiet that had taken hold in the Ukrainian capital over the last two weeks during a festive holiday period. In a rare occurrence, some of the blasts were heard minutes before air-raid warnings sounded in the city.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said the blasts were part of an “attack on critical infrastructure facilities” in the city. No casualties were immediately reported.
At around 9:45 local time, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said that there had been a missile strike on an area in eastern Kyiv. In a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app, he urged residents to remain in shelters.
Russian forces have intermittently targeted Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine far from the front lines since the start of October with large-scale missile and drone attacks that have mostly targeted electricity infrastructure and other key services.
The attacks have crippled Ukraine’s power grid and left the country grappling with rolling blackouts in order to deal with the electricity shortages. Some of the strikes on Saturday morning appeared to come shortly before an air-raid siren warning of a possible attack sounded in the city.
The strikes come as Ukraine was celebrating Orthodox New Year, or Malanka, a traditional holiday that is aligned with the older Julian calendar rather than the newer Gregorian one.
The Kyiv military administration said on Telegram that rocket fragments had damaged a car and that debris had damaged a nonresidential building. The attack damaged 18 houses in the broader Kyiv region, the head of the local military administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, wrote on Telegram.
Kyiv wasn’t the only area of the country subject to Russian attacks on Saturday. Four missiles hit an industrial area of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said in a statement posted to Telegram. Mr. Terekhov said that the missiles targeted infrastructure sites and that information about casualties and damage were still being verified.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.
Megan Specia
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