The United States Embassy in Kyiv issued an urgent warning on Wednesday that Russia was planning “a significant air attack,” closing the embassy and telling employees to shelter in place.
Air raid alerts are a daily fact of life in Ukraine and the capital comes under frequent drone and missile attacks, but the embassy rarely issues such a specific alert.
The warning came one day after Ukraine’s military used American-made ballistic missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time, after President Biden lifted restrictions on their use.
Ukraine struck an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of southwestern Russia using the American-made ballistic missiles, known as ATACMS, for Army Tactical Missile System.
The Kremlin vowed to respond. “We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “And we will react accordingly.”
The embassy did not offer details about the expected attack, but it urged Americans in the city to pay special attention to air raid alerts.
An explosion rang out in the capital just before 8 a.m. when air defense teams shot down a drone, Ukrainian officials said. Falling debris sparked a fire at a multistory residential building. There was no immediate information on casualties. Such drone attacks have become increasingly common in recent weeks.
During 1,000 days of war, city officials said, there have been about 1,370 alerts in Kyiv, lasting more than 1,550 hours in total — meaning that if residents spent every hour of every alert in a shelter, they would have spent more than two months in bunkers.
Over that time, Russia has targeted the capital with more than 2,500 missiles and drones, according to data collected by the city’s military administration.
Around half of the attacks took place this year alone. For the past three months, swarms of attack drones have flown in the direction of Kyiv nearly every night, and the alarms sounded again on Wednesday morning.
Many people seek shelter in subways, basements and underground facilities like parking garages during the alerts. Others have tried to strike a balance by taking simpler precautions, like moving their beds away from windows.
Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia has started outfitting more long-range attack drones with even more dangerous thermobaric munitions, which can envelop an entire apartment in flames.
When ballistic missiles are fired at the capital, there is often little warning, because they travel several times the speed of sound. The time between launch and impact can be a matter of minutes.
Many of the large-scale Russian missile attacks, like one on Sunday aimed at energy infrastructure, feature a combination of drones, cruises and ballistic missiles in an attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
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