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At least three people were killed in the assault on the capital, and at least one died and 11 were wounded in a separate strike in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Emergency workers responding early Saturday after an attack on Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit… Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Jan. 17, 2025
Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with drones and ballistic missiles before dawn on Saturday, officials said, killing at least three people in central Kyiv as part of a broader assault that targeted towns and cities across the country.
Air-raid alarms sounded as emergency crews raced to search for the dead and wounded — a grimly familiar routine in a nation that has been battered by relentless Russian bombardments for nearly three years. Moscow called the attack retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, which in recent weeks appear to have intensified.
The Ukrainian Air Force said that four ballistic missiles and 39 attack drones had been launched in the assault and that two of the ballistic missiles had been shot down in the Kyiv region. Although the city comes under drone attack almost nightly, ballistic missile launches targeting the capital are less frequent.
The pre-dawn attack ruptured a water main near the city center, sending water cascading through the streets around the battered facade of the Lukianivska subway station. Nearby, smoke was rising from a charred van with at least two burned bodies inside.
As a blaze burned deep inside an industrial building across the street, some firefighters were trying to drag debris away from the front of a heavily damaged McDonald’s. Others concentrated on the huge chunks of glass, debris and insulation covering the sidewalk outside the subway station — typically a place where residents seek safety during attacks.
Investigators walked up and down the street, reaching into the rushing water to look for pieces of shrapnel, and some shopkeepers tried to get through the police cordon.
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