Explosions as Russia launches 15th air assault on Kyiv in May

Overnight missile attack comes a day after Russia unleashed its largest ever drone assault on the Ukrainian capital.

Several explosions have rocked the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, according to officials, in the 15th Russian air attack on the city this month and the second overnight attack in a row.

“A missile shot down near Kyiv,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging channel in the early hours of Monday. “Air defence working!”

He added that blasts were heard in several districts of the city, including Kyiv’s historic neighbourhood of Podil, where falling debris damaged the roof of a house.

According to preliminary information from the mayor and the city’s military administration, there were no casualties in the overnight attacks.

The attack on Monday, appearing to be a combination of missiles and drones, follows the largest drone barrage launched on Kyiv the previous night, which killed one person and wounded several more.

Officials said the city’s air defences shot down 40 drones in and around the capital in the early hours of Sunday.

Most of the drones were Iranian-made Shahed loitering munitions, the Kyiv Independent news website reported.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the country’s air defence forces for protecting the country and asked its parliament to impose sanctions against Iran for supplying Russia with weapons, including the Shahed drones.

Waves of Russian attacks against Ukraine now come several times a week.

The full scale of Monday’s attack is not immediately known.

The Reuters news agency reported several loud blasts when the city and the rest of Ukraine were under air raid alerts in the early hours of Monday.

With a long-promised Ukrainian counteroffensive looming to recapture territory taken by Russia since it began its full-scale invasion 15 months ago, Moscow has intensified its attacks, targeting military infrastructure and supplies.

While Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia, a series of raids inside the country have targeted military, energy and transport infrastructure, with Moscow blaming Kyiv for the attacks.