Russia attacked Ukraine overnight from Sunday, 18 October, into Monday, 19 October, with 243 drones and four Iskander-K missiles. In Kyiv, ballistic missiles struck late on Sunday evening, and Mayor Vitali Klitschko later described two Russian air attacks on the capital during the night.
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Klitschko said that around 02:00 a metro station on the left bank of the city was damaged, with splinters hitting the rails and a nearby power rail. The city administration said the damage to tracks and the overhead traction network would keep two red-line stations, Chernihivska and Lisova, closed until further notice.
Klitschko reported that a 21-year-old woman was killed. His early count put the injured at three people, whereas Ukraine's Interior Ministry reported one person killed and eight injured across the city, so the injury counts differ between the two accounts.
The attacks also damaged a residential building in the Solomianskyi district, where windows were blown out and a fire broke out at a medical facility. An educational facility in the Dniprovskyi district was hit as well. In the Desnianskyi district a non-residential building burned, cars were damaged, and rescuers found one body during the firefighting. Ukrainian authorities said all fires had been put out.
Radio Swoboda reported, citing Ukrainian sources, that Kyiv received no warning before the ballistic missiles hit. Alex Raufoglu, a Radio Liberty journalist, wrote on X that no warning had come again, moments before the strike. An unnamed senior Ukrainian official told The Kyiv Independent that the warning arrived only once the missiles had already hit, and said Russia was again preparing something. Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed the missing warning.
Asked about it, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he did not know what had happened the previous night. He referred to a software problem a few nights earlier in Ukraine's early warning system, which EUCOM is investigating. Zelensky told NBC News in a weekend interview that US intelligence sharing had been blocked for a period before the American side unblocked it, and he said Ukraine was grateful. According to Zelensky, Ukraine had not received the data for the previous three days, and only the United States can detect ballistic missile launches. The episode comes as Donald Trump has criticised Zelensky more sharply than ever.
Kyiv has been hit by repeated Russian attacks, and reports have surfaced that Ukraine is running short of Patriot interceptors. The Washington Post reported that Ukraine had only a few such missiles left. Other reports said the United States had halted part of its intelligence sharing and restricted Starshield, the military version of Starlink, which makes it harder to bring down Russian jet-powered drones with interceptor drones. Zelensky has repeatedly asked states with Patriot stocks to supply missiles and estimated that Kyiv needs about 300 before winter. Ukrainian officials have earlier warned that satellite tracking of launch sites can be delayed by data transfer, and that bad weather can disrupt the SBIRS satellite system used to detect missile launches.
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Two red-line metro stations in Kyiv remain closed after the overnight strike damaged tracks, while Radio Swoboda reported that no warning came before the ballistic missiles hit.
AI text based on reports by Libertatea, polsatnews.pl, Rzeczpospolita and other publishers. Published .