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Exploding 250 miles below, this astonishing footage shot from space shows Russian ballistic missiles pounding Ukraine.
The time-lapse video, taken from the International Space Station, records incoming ballistic trajectories and air defence activity over Kyiv.
Published by Riccardo Rossi of the AstronautiCAST YouTube channel, it’s a compilation filmed by an onboard ISS camera in the course of the night of December 26 to 27.
The footage shows flashes which might be unrelated to meteor activity and that are almost actually ballistic missiles countered visible interceptions by Ukrainian air defences.
Explosions seen are consistent with missile strikes in and around the town that night.
Ukrainian officials said Russia launched ten ballistic missiles, including Iskander-M and Kinzhal systems, together with 30 cruise missiles in the course of the overnight assault. The cruise missiles were identified as Kh-101, Iskander-K and Kh-22 types.
The recording, released the day before the fourth anniversary of the war on February 24, offers a rare orbital view of Russia’s missile campaign against Ukraine’s capital and its energy infrastructure.
Kyiv and energy facilities within the region have been repeatedly targeted in large-scale strikes involving a mixture of ballistic and cruise missiles for the reason that start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Since late autumn, Russian forces have increasingly combined missiles with drones in coordinated waves, in what Ukrainian officials say is an effort to overwhelm air defences and disrupt electricity and heating supplies in the course of the winter months.
The December 27 attack was described by Ukrainian authorities as certainly one of the biggest winter assaults on Kyiv to this point.
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