Europe | Aerial revenge

Russia launches a wave of missiles across Ukraine

The attacks on Kyiv and other cities are vengeful and indiscriminate

Cars burn after Russian military strike, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in central Kyiv, Ukraine October 10, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
|Odessa

UKRAINE HAD been bracing for an attack. On October 8th the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to Crimea was seriously damaged by a large explosion. “This is an act of terrorism,” declared Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, a day later, blaming Ukraine’s intelligence services, though Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. “Emotions have been triggered,” said the Russian-appointed governor of Crimea. “There is a healthy desire to seek revenge.” On October 10th it arrived. A huge barrage of missiles slammed into Kyiv and cities across Ukraine, raining down widespread and apparently indiscriminate destruction.

The concerted, multi-wave, multi-rocket attack began during the morning rush hour shortly after 8am local time. It was the biggest since the opening day of the war—and the first time central Kyiv has been hit. A spokesman for Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched 83 missiles, including Kalibr cruise missiles fired from ships in the Caspian and Black Seas, Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from planes and Iskander ballistic missiles. Images and videos from the very heart of the capital showed buildings scorched, cars destroyed and trees felled. The impact from one missile left a crater in the main boulevard leading into the city. Another missile fell near the city’s railway station. A third hit the so-called glass bridge, a symbol of Kyiv’s recent regeneration, where residents take scenic selfies. Others struck office buildings.

Many missiles fell nowhere near any plausible military target, suggesting that the projectiles were either inaccurate or the barrage was intended to be indiscriminate. Russia is thought to have used up a large proportion of its precision-guided missiles—as much as 70% of those in stock, according to a Western military source—and even those weapons have frequently missed their intended targets throughout the war. A large, smouldering crater stood metres away from a children’s playground in Shevchenko Park, one of the city’s busiest parks and usually packed with families. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, recording a video message outside his Kyiv office in the midst of the assault, said that Russia had focused on two targets: energy facilities and people. “I beg you,” he said, “do not leave shelters. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Let’s hold on and be strong.” Ukraine’s defence ministry was defiant, tweeting: “We. Will. Never. Surrender.” Pro-war Russian channels on Telegram, a social messaging platform, were jubilant: “it is a day we had long awaited.”

Kyiv was not the only target. The mayor of Lviv, in western Ukraine, said that Russian missiles had struck critical infrastructure, including mobile-phone networks, power and water facilities. He added that backup generators were being used to pump water and a third of traffic lights were out of action. The governor of Mykolaiv, a southern city near the Black Sea, said that Russia had launched at least three waves of attacks across the country, with the third comprising 47 missiles. The barrage also included ten Iranian-supplied loitering munitions, or suicide drones, sent from Belarus, he said. Many other cities were hit in multi-rocket barrages, including Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhia in central Ukraine and Kharkiv in the east. Kharkiv has been left completely without electricity. Military authorities in Odessa reported that missiles and drones had also been launched against the port city.

Ukrainian air defences intercepted some of the incoming missiles. Ukraine claimed that at least 43 out of 83 missiles had been shot down—if true, an impressive rate of interception. Oleksiy Kuleba, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, asked residents not to photograph or film the landing sites of missiles, or damage to infrastructure, presumably to avoid helping Russia to establish which strikes got through and how accurate they were. But there is also evidence that Ukraine’s defences are stretched thin, with surface-to-air missiles running low, and that foreign help has been slow in arriving.

The attack may mark the start of a harsh new chapter in an already cruel war. It appears to be a statement of intent from Mr Putin and Sergei Surovikin, the general appointed as overall commander of the war on October 8th. Speaking before the attack, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said Ukraine was expecting few good things from the appointment of a “cruel man” with a bloody past. In August 1991 he was one of the very few officers who followed the orders of coup leaders who sought to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev and crush a democratic uprising. General Surovikin spent six months in jail but was released without trial. He then earned a criminal conviction, later overturned, for illegal arms trading. His promotion, it appears, was heavily lobbied for by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has his own private army of mercenaries, the Wagner group. The Ukrainian official said he had studied General Surovikin’s involvement in Afghanistan, two Chechen wars and Russia’s air war in Syria and had come to a simple conclusion: “He’s a butcher.”

The war may also be widening in other ways. Belarus, though an important staging ground for Russia’s initial invasion in February, and a springboard for some air attacks since, has kept its troops out of the conflict. On October 10th Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s president, accused Ukraine of “opening a front” against his country. He said that he and Mr Putin had agreed on October 7th to deploy a “regional group of Russian and Belarusian forces”. The head of Belarus’s border force had earlier accused Ukraine of blowing up bridges to Belarus and mining border roads. It is not clear, however, whether this group will be deployed into Ukraine, which would be a big development, or remain on the Belarusian side of the border.

Meanwhile, Russia, even as it pounded Ukraine, was dealing with the fallout from the Kerch bridge attack. On October 9th Russian divers inspected the bridge to assess the damage. Russian propaganda outlets put on a brave face. Railway and road traffic “has so far been restored”, insisted TASS, a state news agency. British defence intelligence was more sceptical. It noted that two of the four carriageways for road traffic had collapsed over 250m. Though cars had begun travelling over the other two, “capacity will be seriously degraded.” Light traffic has been moving across the damaged railway bridge too, but only in one direction. After a meeting with his security council on October 10th, Mr Putin issued more threats. “If the attacks [on places Mr Putin considers part of Russia] continue,” he warned, “the responses will be tough and will correspond to the scale of the threats.” But more punitive attacks will not salvage his faltering war.

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

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