Following the US halted the transfer of early-warning intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches to Ukraine, at least six civilians have been killed and 21 injured in missile strikes, according to a Kyiv Post review of official reports and damage assessments through Monday.
Kyiv residents have suffered the heaviest losses after the White House ordered a halt to sharing missile-launch data gathered by US global satellite networks with Ukrainian military and civil defense authorities. Civilians in Kharkiv and Dnipro were also among the casualties.
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However, senior US officials led by Secretary of State Marc Rubio have denied invoking the cut-off.
“I don’t know where he’s getting these things or why he’s [President Volodymyr Zelensky] saying these things to the press. You should go back and ask him. There’s been no pause,” Rubio told reporters during a Sunday visit to Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile, Zelensky said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that US intelligence-sharing “was blocked for some period of time” and that Ukraine “didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days,” according to The Guardian.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Monday, Zelensky said the suspension remained in effect and that Ukrainian air-defense forces were still not receiving US-sourced early warnings of Russian ballistic missile launches.
The switch triggering the White House-Pentagon shutdown of data sharing on Russian missile launches detected by US-operated global satellite constellations monitoring hot spots from rocket motor ignitions and tracking missiles on ballistic trajectories was most likely flipped shortly before midnight Kyiv time on Oct. 12 and remains in effect, a Kyiv Post review of early-warning networks found.
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The number of Ukrainians killed and injured in confirmed ballistic missile strikes from Oct. 12-19, as well as in attacks involving missiles of an undetermined type that may have been ballistic, is probably around 20 dead and more than 100 wounded, based on summed reports from Ukraine’s Interior Ministry during that seven-day period.
The Russian ballistic missile arsenal used against Ukraine includes the modern and relatively accurate Iskander-M, which carries a 480-750 kg (1,058-1,063 lb) warhead; the somewhat less sophisticated North Korean KN-23, typically equipped with a warhead of around 500 kg (1,102 lb); and the relatively inaccurate S-400 heavy anti-aircraft missile, which carries a warhead of about 140 kg (309 lb), repurposed from an air defense role to city bombardment missions.
In Ukraine’s experience, a direct hit from an Iskander-M or KN-23 is sufficient to level a medium-sized apartment building or damage portions of a larger structure, while the explosive force of an S-400 can demolish several apartments or a single family home.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force and media reports, the first confirmed lethal Russian ballistic missile strike following the suspension of US intelligence-sharing occurred at about 10:40 p.m. on Oct. 13, when a missile partially struck a nine-story apartment building in Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, the capital’s largest and predominantly working-class district. The area is densely built up with Soviet-era residential and business buildings. News reports identified the address of the building as Kubanska Street 24A. The structure, a typical Brezhnev-era apartment block built from pre-fab concrete slabs covered with ceramic tiles, contained about 300 single-family apartments.
The missile was probably launched from Russia’s Kursk region as part of a salvo of 39 missiles launched that night and followed a ballistic trajectory for about four minutes before impact, according to data published by Ukrainian early-warning networks. A review of civilian air-raid monitoring channels showed that the missile struck before networks had reported it airborne.
Blast damage on the central floors caused extensive cracking and wall failures, and ignited a fire that spread through apartments from the ground floor to the eighth floor. Portions of the structure were made uninhabitable, windows in adjacent buildings facing the blast were shattered, and dozens of private automobiles parked in the vicinity were damaged. Media outlets interviewing evacuees reported that no air-raid siren warning had sounded prior to the Russian missile strike.
Most reports identified the weapon as an Iskander-M ballistic missile. There are no major military facilities or government offices in the vicinity of the strike.
As a result of the blast and falling masonry, three women living at the address were killed, aged 35, 58, and 84. Reports of the number of injured ranged from 19 to more than 25 people, including a seven- or eight-year-old girl who suffered cuts and burns to her arm. A reported 16 residents were hospitalized, some in serious condition, and 16 residents were rescued or evacuated from the building.
Later that night, in the early hours of Oct. 14, another Russian ballistic missile struck Kyiv’s relatively upscale Holosiivskyi district in the south of the city, hitting a non-residential building. There was no air-raid siren and no early warning of the strike, according to a Kyiv Post reporter living in the area.
Two civilians were killed by the missile blast and at least one person was injured. According to Kyiv city administration reports, a total of five people were killed and at least 36 injured in the capital that night. Some of the casualties were caused not by ballistic missiles but by drones launched alongside them, the reports said.
From the moment US intelligence-sharing was cut off through Monday, Oct. 19, Russia launched at least five ballistic-missile salvos against Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Air Force and civil defense reports. These included five missiles overnight on Oct. 12-13, 39 missiles on Oct. 13-14, an undetermined number on Oct. 16-17, and 16 missiles on Oct. 18-19.
A conservative estimate of the warhead weight delivered by those missiles, almost all of which detonated in densely populated Ukrainian cities, would be 35-40 tons of high explosives, Kyiv Post calculated based on typical warhead weights.
The most recent ballistic missile-linked casualties occurred in Kyiv overnight from Sunday to Monday. They included a 21-year-old woman who was killed and eight other civilians who were injured when a strike hit, among other structures, a 25-story residential building, educational facilities, a medical facility, a train track, and control systems near a metro station.
In a few cases, early-warning networks reported incoming missiles one to two minutes before impact, but more often the warning came only after the weapon had already struck a building or the ground, according to Kyiv Post reporters in three districts of the city and a review of open-source early-warning data covering the night’s Russian strikes.
In addition to benefiting from the early-warning shutdown, Russian ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine have been made more effective by delays in US deliveries of PAC-3 interceptor missiles for the Patriot air-defense system. Manufactured in the US, the PAC-3 is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of reliably intercepting ballistic missiles.
In comments on Sunday evening, Zelensky said that, despite existing contracts and payments, the United States was supplying Ukraine with only 12 Patriot interceptor missiles per month, a figure an order of magnitude lower than the 100-150 ballistic missiles Russia launches against Ukraine each month.
Zelensky said he “hoped” the US would change what he described as a policy that appeared unbalanced and favorable to Russia. Since the US cut off the sharing of intelligence, independent Ukrainian media have almost unanimously reported that US President Donald J. Trump and the White House are co-operating with the Kremlin in a strategy that aligns with pro-Russian terms.