One dead, eight wounded in Kyiv strikes as Oleshky truce begins
Ballistic missiles hit a university campus and medical facilities in the capital just hours before a ceasefire started in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky.
By Thiago Kovalenko ·
Residents of Kyiv woke to the aftermath of a late Monday night bombardment that left one person dead and eight others injured. The attack damaged medical infrastructure, including an intensive care unit, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko. The strikes occurred just hours before a temporary ceasefire was set to begin in the southern city of Oleshky.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that ballistic missiles struck the grounds of a university campus in the capital. He described the targets as very crowded areas with no military facilities nearby, characterizing the event as a direct strike on the city's infrastructure. Zelenskyy posted these details on social media, emphasizing the civilian nature of the locations hit.
The violence in Kyiv coincided with the start of a truce in Oleshky, a city in Ukraine's Kherson region that has been under Russian control since 2022. The ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 3:00 a.m. local time, or 01:00 GMT. The pause in fighting is intended to allow humanitarian aid to reach residents who have faced shortages of food, water, and medicine for months. No end date for the truce has been announced.
Details regarding the monitoring of the truce remain unclear. Neither Russia, Ukraine, nor the United States has identified who will oversee the agreement or provided specifics on the accompanying humanitarian operation. The Russian defense ministry said on Friday that it would halt fire in the Kherson sector for the duration of the ceasefire. Ukraine has accused Russia of preventing residents from leaving the city, a claim Moscow has denied.
Ahead of the latest strikes, Zelenskyy addressed a delay in U.S. military support. He said Ukraine had been waiting for nearly a month for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to approve critical missile supplies for Patriot and NASAMS systems. Zelenskyy instructed his team to raise the matter with the American side again. The approval is seen as essential for the operational capacity of Ukraine's air defense network.
In related developments, Romania announced that a network coordinated from Russia was involved in a fire started near an arms factory in Brasov. The fire broke out on September 14. Authorities said two Belarusians and one Ukrainian, all residents of EU countries, were involved. The office for organized crime stated that two suspects were remanded in custody in Germany while preparing for similar offenses, while the third remains at large in Poland. The Russian embassy in Bucharest could not be reached for comment, though Moscow has previously denied such accusations.
The Brasov incident is part of a series of similar events across Europe. NATO and the EU have described a hybrid campaign of sabotage and interference by the Kremlin aimed at weakening Western support for Kyiv. In the last three weeks, at least eight cargo ships were hit off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria. Reports indicate that 34 sailors are dead or missing from these incidents.
On the battlefield, Ukraine's military reported the use of specialized aerial rescue drones to evacuate wounded soldiers. The 475th Separate Assault Regiment said the new StarGate drone was used in two separate missions over the past week. The six-rotor aircraft, developed by the Ukrainian technology company SkyFall, is fitted with an enclosed evacuation capsule. It carried two stranded troops to safety near the Russian border, reducing rescue times from hours to minutes in hard-to-access combat zones.
