Russian drone strikes Kyiv hospital as Starshield falters for second time

Images

×

An overnight Russian drone attack hit a hospital in Kyiv. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian theguardian.com

Russian drone strikes a medical facility in Kyiv theguardian.com

After the strike, firefighters led dazed patients to safety. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian theguardian.com

A hospital corridor on fire following a Russian attack during the night, where a patient on crutches and paramedics can be seen euronews.com

‹ ›

A Russian drone tore into the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics in central Kyiv overnight, striking the second floor of the six-storey building and an adjoining 19th-century block at 3am. Three people were injured; hospital staff evacuated thirty patients and emergency crews rescued seven more as smoke rose over the Shevchenkivskyi district. A parallel strike on Odesa killed two people and injured five, according to Serhii Lysak, head of the city's military administration.

The hospital stands near the Danish and Romanian embassies, and the blast blew out windows in the National Academy of Arts across the road. A resident named Oleksandr described being woken by a "massive boom" and finding glass across his floor. "Targeting the wounded — that's really low," he said.

Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that the Starshield satellite system was again suffering serious disruptions, a month after an earlier slowdown that was never explained. Some Russian drones got through, he said, because interceptors that rely on the American satellite service could not reach the speed needed to knock them out. Starshield is the Ukrainian military's version of Starlink — operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, supervised by the Pentagon. The White House has yet to explain why the service was throttled either time.

The failure came at the end of a week of American shuttle diplomacy. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, then flew to Dublin to brief Zelensky. The Guardian reports Trump appears to be pressing Kyiv toward territorial concessions; Kremlin negotiators are demanding four Ukrainian provinces, including cities and villages Russian troops have been unable to conquer, and a new European security architecture that would return Nato to its pre-1997 posture.

Russia has stepped up strikes on civilian infrastructure in recent weeks — power plants, passenger trains, two bridges across the Dnipro — a campaign Kyiv describes as terror designed to make a weary population capitulate. Moscow said it shot down nearly 1,200 Ukrainian drones overnight, one of the largest swarms Kyiv has sent, and reported at least four people killed in the Volgograd region.

The institute exists to treat the wounded of this war. Its own patients were carried out through the smoke on crutches and in wheelchairs, past the blown-out windows of the Academy of Arts.