Russia launches largest missile barrage at Ukraine's Kyiv since start of war

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has carried out one of the largest ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv since the start of the war. At least one person has been killed. Ukraine's military says Russia fired 41 missiles at the city, with air defences intercepting nearly half of them. Kyiv's mayor says an apartment building was hit and several fires have been reported across the capital. And in Russia, the governor of the southern Stavropol region has said its air defences were countering a Ukrainian drone attack. Two fires have been reported in the industrial zone of the town of Vyazniki. An oil depot in the area has been a frequent target for Ukrainian drones. Well, Dmitry Medvedenko is in the Russian capital, Moscow. Let's first speak to Audrey McAlpine in Kyiv. Audrey, Ukraine's foreign minister, has just stated that Russia has targeted the country with the largest number of ballistic missiles since the full-scale invasion began. That's quite a statement. I mean, what more are you learning on the ground about the scale of this bombardment and, crucially, the level of destruction? Well, we heard from President Zelensky just a few moments ago who said the number of missiles numbered over 40, most of them heading towards the capital here. The attack started just after 1.30. The majority of those missiles coming into the Kyiv around, over the span of just about an hour. So you can imagine just how successive and the amount of explosions people heard overnight. We're here in Lukyanovka, which is an area that has been hit by Russian attacks every single month this year. And you can see this damage. This is the entrance to a shelter where many people were hiding overnight to take shelter from this ongoing attack. You can see the entrance of it has collapsed in on itself. And that's because a ballistic missile crashed down just across the street. There's a crater there that has been sectioned off over. So far, we know that one person is dead in the capital. Around 16 people have been injured, around a half a dozen of those severely injured and are being hospitalized. But you can just see that these attacks on Ukraine, they've been happening, especially in the capital, almost every week. And this destruction around us, this is the amalgamation of that, of these ongoing successive attacks that are increasingly using ballistic threats. And that's because Ukraine has a shortage of the types of missiles that can intercept them at the moment. These Patriot PAK-2 and PAK-3 missiles, which the president has been petitioning his allies for. We also heard in this similar tweet from him where the president was really saying that this was the critical and the most top priority for Ukraine at the moment, getting more of these interceptor missiles to prevent attacks like this one. All right, Audrey, let's get the explanation from Moscow. I want to do is meet you. Medvedenko is there. And Dmitry, let's look at the justification coming from the Kremlin with Russian forces launching dozens of ballistic and hypersonic missiles overnight. Is the Kremlin explicitly calling this an act of revenge for the recent Ukrainian attacks in the Tambov and Moscow regions? Well, yes, just to remind some of our viewers who were not following yesterday, it was one of the most devastating attacks from by Ukraine on Russia, the most, the highest death and casualty toll in the past three years. There were eight people killed and 62 injured as a result. Now, surprisingly, the Kremlin has not said anything about it, despite the fact that it is the highest death toll in three years. But yes, I do understand. And I think this was the expectation in Moscow, as well as in Kiev. But perhaps Audrey will be able to comment on that, that a retaliatory strike, a massive one would come. And it did. So the Russian Defense Ministry, and it's a cold and dry cut style, just listed out the targets that it targeted in the in the past night. And it mentioned three Kiev military enterprises, Radionics, Artyom, Meridian, basically companies producing, as it says, components for Flamingo missiles, as well as for Ukrainian drones. And then it mentions a bunch of other companies that it hit within the Kiev region, saying that, again, these companies are working for the military industrial complex, as well as hitting a logistical distribution complex of Novoposhta. This is the equivalent of UPS, basically, in Ukraine, and very similar to the strike on the Wildberries warehouse, which is the Russian Amazon kind of online marketplace, which got hit last night, two nights ago, when eight people were killed there. All right, Dmitry, back with you in a second. Let's head to Kiev again, speak to Audrey. So Audrey, you heard Dmitry there explain how the Kremlin listed in rather dry, somewhat bureaucratic ways, its targets in Ukraine itself, and also perhaps equally dry. We have this statement, Kiev announcing that Ukraine has struck two Russian oil tankers in the Black Sea. Any more details to add to that? Yeah, we're getting word from Ukrainian officials that they have hit two oil tankers, one dry cargo vessel, and one floating crane in the Black Sea. This is an example of Ukraine's escalating attacks in both the Azov Sea and the Black Sea, which started just around two weeks ago. We heard a statement from Ukraine's unmanned systems forces, who's largely responsible for these strikes, who claims that over the past several weeks, it's managed to hit 176 vessels between those two bodies of water. It's part of Ukraine's long-range drone strikes that it's been escalating now for several months now in an effort to largely cut off the Russian-controlled peninsula of Crimea, as well as to hit these oil tankers. It calls these long-range sanctions, and it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek term that Ukraine uses to say that it is taking these sanctions into its own hands, these vessels that largely, it believes, are used to operate around Western sanctions on Russian oil. So these attacks have been escalating. We heard from President Zelensky again in this statement earlier today, who said that it is essential that pressure on Russia continues in regards specifically to these attacks that we've seen in the Black Sea and in the Sea of Azov. Roger McAlpine in Kiev. Let's return to Dmitry Medvedenko in Moscow. Dmitry, let's take in the latest. What is the official picture coming out of the Russian, by the Russian authorities, of the scale of these latest attacks? The Stavropol region has been mentioned. And how heavily is the domestic air defense network being tested? You know, it's funny that you said the Stavropol region is being mentioned, because in the latest report from the Ministry of Defense, it is not mentioned. The Ministry of Defense is saying that it intercepted 140 drones over Russia, which is a modest figure, actually, given that in the past two months we've had an average of around 500 drones being downed a day, just according to the Ministry of Defense. So whatever isn't downed adds up to that number of drones that were actually sent in and hit their targets. So the Russian Defense Ministry is saying that it hit, that it intercepted targets over Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Rostov, the Moscow region, Krasnodar region, Crimea, I'm almost done, and in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, not mentioning the Stavropol region where that oil depot was hit. We've seen the pictures of those, of these burning depots that we're showing on the screen right now. There was also four apartments hit in the Kursk region when a drone crashed into a residential building and one person was wounded. But nothing really much to report here. Again, 140 drones just seems like a modest, relatively enough, number. All right. Many thanks for the latest. Dmitry Medvedenko in Moscow, Audrey McAlpine in Kyiv.