The US again failed to warn Ukraine of a ballistic strike on Kyiv

Ukrainian sources confirmed to Radio Free Europe journalist Alex Raufoglu that in the early hours of today, Kyiv was struck by ballistic missiles with no advance warning from the United States.

“Ukrainian sources confirm to me that Kyiv has just been hit by ballistic missiles, there was no prior warning,” the journalist wrote on X at midnight.

In the morning, the information was confirmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In his Telegram channel, Zelensky wrote:

“Again a Russian ballistic attack in several waves overnight, and again there was no warning from partners.”

Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, speaking on the Novyny.LIVE television channel, also confirmed that no information from the United States had been received before the attack. According to him, Ukrainian radars detected the Russian missiles on their own. “Our specialists, who work together with American partners, are finding out the reasons why the information was not received,” Ihnat said.

During the next attack, at around three in the morning, a warning from the Americans did arrive, but there was little time to react. As a result, air raid sirens in some parts of Kyiv may have sounded only after the explosions.

“If we have this information in advance, a few minutes ahead, five minutes, then of course that is good. But sometimes it comes very late,” Ihnat added.

Later that evening, the Ukrainian military Telegram channel “Mykolayivsky Vanek” reported that intelligence from the Americans was again coming through properly. The channel published warnings about ballistic missiles heading toward the capital several minutes before Kyiv-based channels reported the first impacts. According to open-source data, Russian ballistic missiles take 2–3 minutes to fly from the Bryansk region to Kyiv.

A similar incident occurred on the night of October 14, when Russia attacked Kyiv’s energy infrastructure: at that time, the US also failed to warn Ukraine of the missile threat to the capital.