Russia-Ukraine war live: airstrike on Kyiv following warnings of ballistic missile attack

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Ukraine’s air force said it downed five ballistic missiles and 40 drones in a Russian attack, with a further 20 drones failing to reach their targets, Reuters reports.

It said a total of 65 drones had been launched overnight.

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv this morning killed one and hospitalised two. Authorities in Moscow claimed the strike was in response to a Ukrainian attack on Russian soil using American-made weapons earlier in the week.

Photos show the aftermath of this morning’s strike on Kyiv …

A Ukrainian rescuer works to extinguish a fire at the site of a missile attack. Photograph: Ukrainian emergency services/AFP/Getty Images

A building damaged as a result of a missile attack in Kyiv Photograph: Ukrainian emergency services/AFP/Getty Images

Ukrainian rescue services work to put out fires after a Russian ballistic missile attack. Photograph: Libkos/Getty Images

Russia said it targeted arms industry and security service targets in strikes on Kyiv this morning as a “response” to this week’s strikes by Ukraine using Western missiles on a chemical plant in southern Russia.

One person was reported killed and two injured in the attacks on Kyiv early this morning.

“In response to the actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its Western handlers, a combined strike with long-range precision weapons was launched today,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.

Russia said yesterday that Ukraine had launched six US-made long-range ATACMs missiles and four British-made Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s southern Rostov region on Wednesday.

Poland will summon the Hungarian ambassador in reaction to Budapest’s decision to grant asylum to former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, Poland’s foreign ministry said on Friday, Reuters reports. Poland called the move a “hostile act”.

Romanowski faces a probe in Poland over accusations of misuse of public funds.

The Hungarian prime minister’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, speaking to website mandiner.hu, accused the Polish government of hounding its political opponents. The decision to grant asylum was in accordance with both Hungarian and European Union laws, he said.

“The actions of (prime minister Donald) Tusk’s government have created a situation where the Polish government disregards its constitutional court’s rulings ... and uses criminal law as a tool against political opponents,” Gulyas said.

Poland and Hungary are historically close allies, but the war in Ukraine has driven them apart. Hungary is the Kremlin’s closest ally in the EU.

Tusk’s pro-European government says it has opened the way for prosecutors to investigate wrongdoing under the previous nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government that left office in 2023, that would previously have been covered up.

“If Hungary fails to fulfil its European obligations, Poland will also request the European Commission to initiate proceedings against Hungary,” it said in a statement.

Opening summary

One person was reported killed on Friday in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where AFP staff saw smoke rise over parts of the city after a series of explosions.

“According to preliminary reports, one person was killed,” the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Popko, said on Telegram.

Popko said Russian forces had used eight Kinzhal and Iskander missiles in the strike at around 7:00 am (0500 GMT).

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that, “as a result of the enemy attack”, two people were hospitalised and debris fell in four areas, setting cars and buildings alight.

“Emergency services are working everywhere,” he said on Telegram.

The blasts came after the Ukrainian air force warned of an impending ballistic missile attack.

“Ballistic missile from the north!” the air force said on Telegram.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference on Thursday suggested a “hi-tech duel” over Kyiv to test his claims that Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik, is impervious to air defences.

Ukrainian authorities also reported missile attacks in the southern port city of Kherson, where one person was killed and six injured, as well as several other Ukrainian cities and towns.

More on this shortly, in other developments:

• Attacks overnight also hit the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih, badly damaging a two-storey building and injuring six people, according to officials. A man and a teenage girl had been pulled from the rubble and had been hospitalised, the region’s governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram.

• Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Putin’s comments about testing a new hypersonic missile above Kyiv “to see what happens”. Zelenskyy said: “Do you think that’s a sane person? Simply scumbags.”

• Russia has been accused of carrying out a mass cyber-attack on Ukraine’s state registries. Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said on Facebook late on Thursday: “As a result of this targeted attack, the work of the unified and state registries, which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, was temporarily suspended.” Stefanishyna said it was clear the attack was “carried out by the Russians to disrupt the work of the country’s critically important infrastructure”. Russia did not immediately comment on the claim.

• Vladimir Putin has said he was ready to meet Donald Trump and discuss peace proposals as he used a marathon phone-in event to claim that the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger”. The Russian president said during the annual event that Moscow was “ready for negotiations and compromises” to end the fighting, but later he pointed to a maximalist position that would involve keeping Crimea and other occupied territories, Ukraine not joining Nato, and the lifting of sanctions by the west. He also denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing.

• Zelenskyy said Putin was a fantasiser and accused him of wanting to destroy Ukraine’s army. “He (Putin) is an old fantasiser. He lives in a different world. He lives in his own aquarium I am afraid.”

• Zelenskyy said he needed both Europe and the United States on board to secure a durable peace, as he huddled with EU leaders at their final summit before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I believe that the European guarantees won’t be sufficient for Ukraine,” he said after talks with his EU counterparts.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “dumbass” in a post on X last night.

The post contained a video of the Russian president saying he found the idea of striking Kyiv with a hypersonic Oreshnik missile to test Ukraine’s air defences “interesting”.

“People are dying and he finds it ‘interesting’ ... Dumbass,” Zelenskyy’s post said.