Kiev's Darkest Night: At Least 17 Dead, More Than 100 Injured in Violent Russian Attack

The night of 400 drones, the worst ever; and the night of missiles, 32, an attack that began in the evening and ended this morning at 8:30 when the Apps finally croaked the green light, no threat in sight in the skies. The disaster was already done: 17 dead in Kiev alone, the most affected city, and more than a hundred wounded. At least one dead and destruction also in Odessa , the other major city under direct fire.

“Kiev has suffered one of the most terrible attacks and the regions of Odessa, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Zytomyr, Kirovohrad and Mykolaiv have been attacked,” wrote President Volodymyr Zelensky on social media. The night in Kiev is one of endless terror. According to the head of the capital’s military administration, Timur Tkachenko , “the city has been attacked by 175 drones, at least 14 cruise missiles and at least two ballistic missiles.” It is impossible not only to sleep, even for those who, after 40 months of nightly bombings, fatalistically tuck themselves in and trust in good luck; but even to flee to reach a shelter. “In my neighborhood, the drones’ buzzing continued without interruption all night,” they say from the Solomyansky neighborhood, in the center of the capital.

Usually the attacks proceed in waves, and between one wave and the next there is time to run to the shelter if the monitoring channels signal the imminent arrival of another large number of drones or especially ballistic missiles. But when the drones are already in the sky no one dares to leave their homes to reach a shelter or a subway station. Clouds of smoke and fires, roars of explosions, bursts of anti-aircraft fire and flashes in the sky, fireballs in flight, the rain of debris. The images and sounds of anguish, the curses and tears of fear of the people of Kiev terrified by the most violent night of this now long war are circulating on social media.

The toll is getting worse by the hour. “Three dead in the Darnitsky district,” announced Mayor Klitschko . But more than twenty areas in eight districts of the capital have come under fire, and the Solomyansky district is the hardest hit. The images of a father and mother embracing in tears in front of the destroyed house where their son was buried are a punch in the stomach and are going around the internet, like the one in which the father himself is on his knees praying with his hands folded in front of the rubble. An entire building was razed to the ground: that is where most of the dead are said to be, and the toll is still partial.

In another building, the student house of the Civil Aviation, the students escaped by fleeing to the shelter below. It is often said that one of the great threats to civilians is the shooting down of drones in the middle of houses, because the fiery debris falls or deviates in its course ending up on unexpected and random targets, a house, a park, a street; but a video shot in Kiev at night shows a drone going straight into a window of a building, without any deviation. There are only a few possible explanations: either it was "blinded" by the electronic warfare with which the defenses hinder the attacks, or it was aiming exactly at that civilian building, perhaps that specific window.

These are discussions that are now raging in the anonymous square of social media. The same one where people are trying to understand what the main objectives of this attack on the heart of Ukraine were, in addition to terrorizing the inhabitants of Kiev. One was certainly Zuljani airport, Kiev's second civilian airport closed by the invasion. It is located right in the Solomyansky neighborhood and is often one of the targets, but tonight the Russians particularly targeted it. "I counted 17 explosions," says one of the residents who lives no more than a kilometer from the runways. Smoke and fires, closed roads: impossible to verify the damage, also because it is an obvious military secret. According to the chatter on the internet, for what it's worth, the Russians were aiming at Ukrainian defensive and offensive weapons such as the Patriot system that they say they have located in the area.

"These attacks," Zelensky said, "are pure terrorism. And the entire world, the United States and Europe, must finally respond as a civil society responds to terrorists. Putin is doing this only because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to continue. It is wrong for the powerful of this world to turn a blind eye. We are in contact with all partners to ensure an adequate response."