KYIV, Ukraine — A series of explosions rang out in central Kyiv on Saturday morning, jolting city residents from a relative quiet that had taken hold in the Ukrainian capital over the last two weeks during a festive holiday period.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said the blasts were part of an “attack on critical infrastructure facilities” in the city.
At around 9:45 local time, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said that there had been a missile strike on the Dniprovs’kyi district in eastern Kyiv. In a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app, he urged residents to remain in shelters.
Mr. Klitschko later said that pieces of a rocket had fallen in the Holosiiv district, a nonresidential area of the capital, and that no casualties had been reported.
Russian forces have intermittently targeted Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine far from the front lines since the start of October with large-scale missile and drone attacks that have mostly targeted electricity infrastructure and other key services.
The attacks have crippled Ukraine’s power grid and left the country grappling with rolling blackouts in order to deal with the electricity shortages. Some of the strikes on Saturday morning appeared to come shortly before an air-raid siren warning of a possible attack sounded in the city.
The strikes come as Ukraine was celebrating Orthodox New Year, or Malanka, a traditional holiday that is aligned with the older Julian calendar rather than the newer Gregorian one.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.
