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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
In the evening 12 October, Russia struck Kyiv with at least six ballistic missiles, and they were detected only directly during the attack. The reasons why data on launches from the opponent's territory did not arrive in advance are currently being established. At the same time, the enemy attacked Kharkiv with nine Banderol loitering munitions.
According to the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the strike on the capital occurred at 22:10 — the enemy delivered it, preliminarily, with six ballistic missiles of a type being clarified, on several districts of the city. Ballistic targets were detected by radar means only directly during the attack on Kyiv, and information about launches from the opponent's territory did not arrive.
The Air Forces stressed that the reasons why the warning of danger could not be received in advance are still being established. Final information about the type of missiles used and the full consequences of the strike on Kyiv and Kharkiv was promised to be released in the morning briefing.
Some monitoring channels link the night attack to a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump, who on the eve said that Ukraine could be left without crucial reconnaissance information. Because of this, the strike was nicknamed the "first greeting" from the United States — a hint at possible consequences for Ukraine’s air defense, which depends on intelligence data shared by partners, including the United States.
However, military observers urged not to jump to such conclusions. In their view, cases where strike assets go unnoticed in advance have occurred before and are mostly technical rather than political in nature.
"If we put it very briefly — we record ballistic exits with our own forces; there is a whole infrastructure that operates autonomously from the U.S. We always record exits of the C-400 poorly," said military correspondent Bohdan Miroshnykov.
A similar position is shared by former head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council, Andriy Kovalenko, who urged not to spread theses about the lack of alertness being connected to a halt in intelligence sharing, calling them inaccurate.
Why missiles reach the target earlier than the warning signal
The speed of ballistic missiles does not always allow the alert system to work in advance, so the population sometimes learns of danger post factum. The less time passes between launch and impact, the higher the risk that the warning signal will sound after the explosions, as happened in Kyiv 12 October.
The difficulty of fixing launches of S-400 complexes and individual ballistic missiles is not a new problem: similar cases where strike assets remained unnoticed in advance were recorded before, including this summer. Therefore, final conclusions about possible influence of U.S. statements on intelligence should be made only after official confirmation from missile defense specialists.
Earlier, Informator reported that ballistic missiles had already struck Kyiv without a warning, when explosions rang out even before the first danger signal — five explosions in a row were recorded. We also wrote that Russia attacked Kharkiv and nine settlements in the region, resulting in six people injured — this indicates that the city remains under constant fire from the enemy.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Інформація про пуски балістики по Києву не надходила - ракети виявили під час атаки - Повітряні сили про удар РФ 12 жовтня". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
