Kyiv hit by missile barrage as Ukraine claims strikes on Russian satellite network sites

Russian forces launched a missile attack on Kyiv in the early hours of Sunday, starting fires in at least two districts of the Ukrainian capital, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The city's military administration reported one person injured. Air raid alerts sounded after 2am, and witnesses described hearing explosions across the city. Klitschko wrote on Telegram that falling debris ignited a fire in a non-residential building in a northern suburb, setting several cars alight, while another fire broke out in an area just south of the city centre. Unofficial Telegram channels shared images said to show burning market stalls.

The attack comes amid weeks of intensified Russian air strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Ukraine said it had carried out long-range strikes on a Russian military airfield and a rocket facility that supports Russia's developing Starlink-style satellite internet network. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Flamingo cruise missiles had hit the rocket plant, located roughly 900km from the Ukrainian border, as part of a campaign to pressure Moscow into ending the war by striking targets deep inside Russian territory. He said the goal was to visibly reduce Russia's war-making capacity through damage to specific facilities. Ukraine's armed forces confirmed direct hits at an airfield in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, which reportedly hosted aircraft used in attacks on Ukraine, and at the Progress rocket centre in the Samara region, causing fires at both locations. The Samara plant builds rockets that launch satellites for Rassvet, a broadband network Russia is developing as a rival to SpaceX's Starlink, which operates in Ukraine but not in Russia and gives Kyiv an edge in drone operations and battlefield communications. Officials in Samara said air defences repelled a large-scale missile attack, though local industrial infrastructure sustained limited damage.

Separately, Russia's foreign ministry said it had asked Washington and Ankara to clarify reports of a possible transfer to Ukraine of a substantial stockpile of US weapons and ammunition currently held in Turkey, warning such a move would seriously damage bilateral relations with both countries.

On Saturday, a Russian drone strike on an apartment block in Marhanets, in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 people, according to regional officials. Russia's defence ministry said its forces had struck Ukrainian logistics hubs, energy and transport infrastructure, and long-range drone assembly workshops over the previous 24 hours.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told Vladimir Putin in a letter that he was proud of the two countries' ties, according to state media, expressing confidence Russia would prosper under Putin's leadership. In his own letter, Putin said relations between Moscow and Pyongyang had reached an unprecedented level of strategic partnership. The exchange follows Ukraine's claim earlier this month that Russia used North Korean ballistic missiles in a strike that killed at least nine people, as well as Kyiv's unverified assertion that up to 50,000 North Korean troops may be deployed to Russia.