KYIV — Russia attacked Ukraine on Friday with four hypersonic missiles, damaging a children’s hospital in Kyiv and killing a boy in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukrainian officials said.
The launches of the X-47 Kinzhal missiles were carried out from the Tula and Lipetsk regions of Russia, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement. One missile was destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses in the Kyiv region, while the others hit civil infrastructure, a residential area and near an airfield, the Air Force said.
Debris from one of the missiles fell on the grounds of a children’s hospital and on a roof of a private house, Vitaly Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv, said in a statement. No one was injured, he added.
In the Ivano-Frankivsk region in western Ukraine, a Russian missile hit a private house in the Kolomyisky district, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding his family members, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine said in a statement. Officials have opened a criminal proceeding into the incident as a war crime.
Russia has regularly attacked Ukraine with Kinzhal missiles since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has bragged that Kinzhal missiles can fly at hypersonic speed and maneuver over its entire flight path, making the weapon very difficult for air defense and anti-missile systems to defend against.
In May, Ukraine’s air defense managed to shoot down a Kinzhal for the first time, using U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems Kyiv first received in April. Since then, Ukraine has reported downing Kinzhal missiles at least three more times.
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