Kyiv under fire: Ballistic missiles strike university grounds as Oleshky truce begins

One person died and eight others were injured in late Monday attacks on the Ukrainian capital.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that ballistic missiles struck the grounds of a university campus in Kyiv. He stated that the projectiles hit densely populated areas where no military installations were located nearby. The president described the incident as a direct assault on the city's infrastructure rather than a tactical military target. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that medical facilities and an intensive care unit sustained damage during the strikes.

These attacks occurred hours before a ceasefire was scheduled to take effect in Oleshky, a city in the southern Kherson region. The truce was set to begin at 3 a.m. local time on Tuesday, aiming to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid. Oleshky has been under Russian occupation since 2022 and is currently facing severe shortages of food, water, and medicine. Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian government has announced an end date for the ceasefire. Additionally, neither side, nor the United States, has clarified who will monitor the agreement or provided specific details regarding the accompanying humanitarian operation.

The Russian defense ministry announced on Friday that it would suspend fire in the Kherson sector for the duration of the ceasefire. Ukraine has accused Moscow of preventing residents from leaving the city, a claim that Russian officials have denied. The timing of the Kyiv strikes has raised questions about the conditions under which the truce will operate on the ground.

Zelenskyy also addressed a delay in American defense support. He said Ukraine had been waiting nearly a month for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to approve critical missile supplies for Patriot and NASAMS systems. The president instructed his team to raise the issue with American counterparts again, highlighting the ongoing friction in the bilateral defense relationship.

In related developments, Romanian authorities said a network coordinated from Russia was involved in a fire that started on September 14 near an arms factory in Brasov. Two Belarusians and a Ukrainian, all residents of EU countries, were implicated in the incident. German authorities detained two of the suspects while they prepared for similar offenses, and the third remains at large in Poland. Moscow has previously denied accusations of such coordinated sabotage. Over the past three weeks, at least eight cargo ships have been attacked off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, leaving approximately 34 sailors dead or missing.

Ukrainian forces also reported the first operational use of the StarGate aerial rescue drone. The six rotor aircraft, developed by the company SkyFall, is equipped with an enclosed capsule to carry wounded soldiers. The 475th Separate Assault Regiment stated that the drone successfully evacuated two stranded troops near the Russian border in two separate missions over the past week, reducing rescue times from hours to minutes.