Ukraine says it repelled Russian missile attack on capital

KIEV

Ukrainian forces said they thwarted a Russian missile attack on the capital Kiev where air raid sirens sounded before dawn on Sunday.

"This is the third ballistic missile attack on the capital in August with a clear interval of six days between each attack," the Kiev City Military Administration posted on Telegram after the early morning barrage.

Simultaneous to the missile attack, drones were spotted heading to Kiev.

"All enemy drones were destroyed far outside the city," it added.

No damage or casualties were reported from the attack, which the administration said had "most likely used North Korean ballistic missiles of the KN-23 type."

The United States and Seoul have accused North Korea of providing ammunition and missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Kiev has repeatedly called for its allies in the West to provide more air defense systems.

Last weekend, a 35-year-old man and his four-year-old son were killed in an overnight Russian missile attack near Kiev. Three other people were seriously injured.

Concern has deepened after Moscow vowed a "tough response" to the recent Ukrainian advance into Russian territory.

Two and a half years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Kiev's troops last week launched a major counter-offensive into the Kursk region, sending more than 120,000 people fleeing.

Ukraine claims to have seized more than 1,100 square kilometers of Russian territory in the biggest attack by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.

On Aug. 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his army was reinforcing its positions in the Russian region of Kursk with the operation "proceeding exactly as we expected."

On the other side of the front line, Russian air defenses destroyed five Ukrainian drones in the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions on Aug. 17 night, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia's southern Rostov region early yesterday morning, sparking a large fuel fire, the local governor said.

Videos published on social media showed thick black smoke and bursts of flames coming from the site of the blaze, which the governor said was in the town of Proletarsk.

"In the south-east of the Rostov region, air defenses repelled a drone attack. As a result of falling debris on the territory of industrial storage facilities in Proletarsk, a diesel fuel fire broke out," Governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram.

"At 05:35 a.m., firefighting at the industrial facility in Proletarsk was suspended due to a second drone attack," he added in an update to the post.

No-one was injured and firefighting efforts resumed shortly after, he said in a later post.

Proletarsk is some 250 kilometers from the Ukrainian border and some 350 kilometers from Kiev-held areas of fighting on the eastern Ukrainian frontline.

Kiev has repeatedly targeted oil and gas facilities in Russia since the conflict began in 2022, some hundreds of kilometers from its borders, in what it has called "fair" retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.