Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry says an early morning Russian ballistic missile attack Friday on the capital of Kyiv killed at least one person and damaged six foreign embassies and a university in the city’s center.
On its Telegram social media account, Ukraine's air force said it intercepted five Iskander short-range ballistic missiles fired at the city, but falling missile debris caused damage and sparked fires in three districts. City officials reported damage to multiple residential buildings, medical facilities and schools.
Air force officials urged citizens to immediately respond to reports of ballistic attack threats because they provide very little time to find shelter.
At a briefing in Kyiv on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Georgiy Tykhyi said the missile attack did significant damage to a building that houses the embassies of Albania, Argentina, Palestine, North Macedonia, Portugal and Montenegro. He shared pictures of the damage to the buildings. No injuries were reported in those attacks.
The Kyiv National Linguistics University said on its Instagram account that its building also had been hit and shared a picture of two large windows that blown out near an entrance.
Russia has said it launched the attack in retaliation for Kyiv firing into Russian with U.S.-made weapons.
Regional authorities in the southern port city Kherson also reported coming under attack Friday. In a video statement, Kherson Regional Military Administration chief Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian shelling targeted “residential areas, critical and social infrastructure,” with two houses and two medical institutions sustaining damage.
Prokudin said at least one person was killed and seven injured during the attack.
Meanwhile, Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister of justice, reported Friday that Russia had launched a cyberattack on state registers, resulting in a shutdown.
Stefanishyna made the initial report from her Facebook page, where she said it was clear the attack was orchestrated by Russia to “sow panic among citizens of Ukraine and abroad.”
She held a briefing later Friday in Kyiv along with Ukraine’s acting head of the Cybersecurity Department of the security service, Volodymyr Karastelov.
She told reporters that while it appeared no data was lost or stolen, the ministry suspended the activities of all state registers to avoid further deployment of threats. The affected registries include civil acts such as marriages, wills, births, car registrations, and Stefanishyna said they are working to restore them.
The Cybersecurity Department said their main line of investigation was that a hacker group affiliated with Russian military intelligence was behind the attack. Russia has yet to comment on the attack.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
