Blasts heard in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities amid mass missile strikes

Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said, with several blasts heard in the country’s capital while air defence systems were engaged in repelling the attack.

The loud blasts were heard in Kyiv just before 7am, Reuters’ witnesses reported.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, initially said that air defence systems were engaged and later that medics were attending one victim in the Dnipro district of the capital.

Two high-voltage lines in the capital had been damaged by rocket fragments, Klitschko said, knocking out power in some areas.

A missile attack further south in Mykolaiv killed one person and damaged at least 20 residential buildings, with some injuries reported, the mayor of the city, Oleksandr Sienkevych, said.

“There are damaged residential buildings. About 20 of them are without roofs. Damage to gas and water supply networks is already being eliminated by utility workers. There are wounded. One person is hospitalised. Others were helped on the spot,” he wrote on Telegram before adding that the hospitalised man had died.

Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s north-east, said Russian missiles struck non-residential infrastructure in Kharkiv city, the administrative centre of the region.

All of Ukraine came under an air raid alert from around 6am on Wednesday, with Ukraine’s air force warning on Telegram of a risk of a Russian missile attack.

Strikes were also reported in the Nikolaev and Lviv regions

This is a developing news story, please check back for updates