International- Russia on Tuesday launched a massive — and deadly — missile and drone barrage on Ukraine.
- Business Insider spoke with a Ukrainian lawmaker who experienced the attack.
A Russian missile launched as part of a massive attack on Kyiv this week sounded like "Armageddon" when it exploded in the city, a Ukrainian lawmaker who experienced the effects of the resulting blast recalled.
Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada, described Tuesday's deadly barrage — during which a mix of cruise and ballistic missiles and explosive one-way attack drones rained down on Kyiv and other cities — in a recent interview with Business Insider.
Rudik said she woke up at around 7 a.m. that morning to the sound of an air-raid siren, an increasingly common occurrence as Russia has intensified its aerial attacks against Ukraine. In trying to make her way downstairs to hide underneath the staircase — the safest place in her home — there was an explosion several hundred meters away. The blast ripped through the windows of her home, blowing them right out of their frames.
"The sound was like what you would imagine the Armageddon would be," Rudik said. Outside her home, she could see fires, smoke was everywhere, and people were running around screaming and checking on their neighbors to make sure they were alive.
My home is now partially in rubble. I have no windows on one side anymore. I have minor injuries but I am alive. The fires are everywhere. russia you will pay. pic.twitter.com/rLaITQowkV
— Kira Rudik (@kiraincongress) January 2, 2024
But the attack wasn't over . The air-raid sirens continued to blare as the blast was followed by more missiles and more explosions. Rudik called emergency services, whose rescue workers were all several hundred meters from her home at the site of the missile impact — they told her to hide because it was still dangerous.
Eventually, after the attack was finished, the ambulances arrived in her neighborhood. Rudik was lightly wounded, but some of her neighbors were not as lucky and suffered more serious injuries — like lost limbs — because they were hit by glass that had shattered and parts of their walls that had fallen.
Rudik said if the damage was as bad as it was around her home, several hundred meters away from the actual site of the missile impact, "you can imagine what happened to the homes of people who were closer."
She said it's unclear if the missile was intercepted by an air-defense system before it made impact, but even if that was the case, "it still does lots of damage."
Rudik said that in the aftermath of the attack, Ukrainians came together to help each other, taking care of children, driving people to the hospital, fixing up homes, cleaning fallen glass and debris, and gathering warm clothes and food.
Ukrainian fficials said later that day that five people were killed and at least 130 others wounded in the attack. But Rudik believes the injury toll is probably higher than what was revealed publicly because she knows many people — herself included — who did not report their injuries because they were relatively light. She also stressed that their are no legitimate military targets in her Kyiv neighborhood.
Tuesday's barrage came just a few days after Russia launched its biggest aerial bombardment of Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. During the December 29 attack, Moscow's forces fired nearly 160 missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, from Kyiv to Odesa, killing dozens and injuring more than 150 others.
Ukrainian civilians rang in the new year under the threat of Russian missilesand drone attacks, while the battlefield's sprawling front line has remained largely unchanged for months. It's a grim situation, but Rudik said it's important to focus on what's within her control and taking action, like explaining the urgency of the situation to her colleagues in governments abroad.
"People are, of course, upset and people are getting angry," Rudik said.
"There is no question [these] two years have been exhausting and people lost their families, lost their loved ones, lost their homes," she said. "People live under the constant threat of being killed in their beds. That's all true. But the question is, what are our options on the table?"
"Right now, you are here to do your best and to keep fighting and keep pushing back, and make sure that Bucha and Irpin will not be repeated," Rudik said, referring to the two Kyiv suburbs where Russian soldiers in spring 2022 were accused of committing widespread massacres, human rights violations, and other brutal atrocities.
The Russian military "never switched from their main objective to destroy us because when I'm asking myself this question of why did this happen to me," Rudik said, the answer is "because I exist and they want us gone."
Tuesday's attack also comes as Ukraine inches closer to the two-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, and questions loom over the future of Western support for the country. In the US — Kyiv's biggest provider of security assistance — additional funding remains held up in Congress, despite repeated pleas of urgency from the Biden administration.
Rudik said it's important for Ukraine's military backers — like the US and its Western allies — to understand that they need to ramp up support for Kyiv or the Russian threat will soon come knocking at their own doorsteps. This was underscored just last week, she noted, when NATO-member Poland reported that a Russian missile entered its airspace for several minutes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expected that people would eventually get tired of supporting Ukraine as the war dragged on, and right now, "his bets are working," Rudik stressed. She added that attacks like the one this week will only continue as Moscow continues to produce missiles and drones.
"We were lucky that time, [we] got saved at that time," she said of Tuesday's deadly barrage. "But what about the next time?"