Russia launched a combined missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, overnight, with residents sheltering in metro stations and air raid sirens blaring for hours.
Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City military administration, said Ukrainian forces destroyed several cruise and ballistic missiles and up to a dozen drones.
Some 96 different “means of air assault were detected” by the air force, including anti-aircraft missiles, winged missiles from strategic bombers, Iskander-M strategic missiles and Shahed drones, the Ukrainian military said in a Facebook post Wednesday.
Officials said a 48-year-old man was wounded by the falling debris of a downed drone in the Kyiv suburb of Brovary, and emergency services distributed images of firefighters battling flames at one site.
A separate drone attack in the Kherson region killed a 52-year-old woman, officials said.
Blasts were heard in Kyiv after the air force put the nation under an air raid alert.
“Putin is launching a missile attack on Kyiv right now,” the president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on the social media platform Telegram, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The attack came after a U.S. State Department spokesperson said North Korea troops have begun fighting alongside Russians.
“Over 10,000 DPRK (North Korean) soldiers have been sent to eastern Russia, and most of them have moved to the far western Kursk Oblast, where they have begun engaging in combat operations with Russian forces,” spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during a Tuesday briefing in Washington.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov “to discuss battlefield dynamics and provide an update on U.S. security assistance” for the Eastern European country, according to Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder.
Ryder said, “the secretary reaffirmed President [Joe] Biden’s commitment to surge security assistance to Ukraine.”
The Pentagon also clarified the amount of money that remains available for Ukraine’s military assistance. There is about $7.1 billion left in the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which includes $4.3 billion approved by Congress in April, plus $2.8 billion that became available after recalculations.
Additionally, there is about $2.2 billion available under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program. Ryder again underscored that the United States would rush aid to Ukraine and use all available funds.
Ryder said the two defense leaders also talked about the implications of the thousands of North Korean troops now assessed to be mostly in western Kursk Oblast.
Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
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