António Guterres was still in town when several Russian missiles hit Kyiv on Thursday evening.

The first two impacts destroyed a commercial building in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.

The detonations could be heard in the center.

Residents reported to the FAZ that there was a column of black smoke over the area.

Shortly thereafter, there were two more explosions in a residential area near downtown.

Alexander Haneke

Editor in Politics.

  • Follow I follow

There, a rocket hit the lower floors of a block of flats, another the roof of a factory building across the street.

Initially, it was said that only ten people were injured in the attack because the 21-story apartment block was still under construction and only a few floors were inhabited so far.

On Friday, however, rescue workers found the body of a woman under the rubble, a journalist from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Ukraine.

The rocket had drilled deep into the first floor and destroyed several apartments there.

In another apartment building next to the factory, the blast shattered windows and blew balcony doors off their hinges.

The remains of the rocket, the type of which has not yet been officially specified, fell next to a playground.

On Friday morning, residents and numerous helpers were busy repairing the worst damage in the apartments and sweeping up the broken pieces.

In front of the hit apartment building, construction workers removed the rubble with heavy equipment.

"Only the two cats are still hiding in the bathroom"

The recent impacts tear Kyiv out of a phase of relative calm.

Since the withdrawal of the Russian army from the north of the country, more and more people have been returning to the Ukrainian capital.

Many shops are opening their doors again and the streets are filling up.

More than five million Ukrainians have fled the country since the Russian invasion began, but many are moving back after months abroad.

Arseny Belostotsky lives with his mother Elena in the apartment building next to the factory, where most of the windows were destroyed by the blast.

They just returned this week from Spain, where they stayed with relatives for a month and a half.

The FAZ accompanied the two on the train journey from the Polish border town of Przemysl to Kyiv.

Now Arseniy stands in the stairwell while neighbors carry torn blinds and buckets full of broken glass downstairs, trying to appear composed.

He was lying in his bed when the Russian missile hit the factory across the street, and the blast threw him across the room.

A few moments later he heard the second explosion in the apartment building.

Most of the windows in the apartment were broken, frames were torn from their hinges, but they are fine, says the 16-year-old boy, forcing a smile.

"Only the two cats are still hiding in the bathroom." But when asked whether he regrets returning to his unsafe hometown, he says no without hesitation.

"We knew the war wasn't over," says Arseniy's mother Elena, a lawyer.

"But what else should we have done in Spain." She doesn't speak the language and can't work in her job.

Arseny also wanted to go home at all costs.

In fact, downtown Kiev has so far been considered comparatively safe.

Even at the height of the war, attacks on residential areas were the exception.

It is possible that Thursday evening's blow was related to the visit of UN Secretary-General Guterres.

Most recently, Russia shelled numerous railway facilities in western Ukraine last Sunday after an American delegation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled to Kyiv for a secret visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In Moscow, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry said on Friday that high-precision, long-range missiles hit a factory of Ukrainian missile manufacturer Artem in Kyiv.

There was no official confirmation from the Ukrainian side, but the company's facilities actually cover large parts of the large block of houses whose outbuildings were hit by the first rocket on Thursday evening.

The other apparently just missed its target and hit the apartment building across the street.

On the other side of the "Artem" complex, Russian rockets had already destroyed a peripheral building and a metro station weeks ago.