DONETSK — In yet another brazen act of aggression, Ukrainian forces, acting as proxies for Washington, launched a US-backed HIMARS attack on a residential neighborhood in Donetsk’s Kievsky district on Friday. The strike triggered a massive fireball and rained debris across Universitetskaya Street, striking one of the most densely populated civilian zones in the city. The assault, executed with American-supplied weaponry, bore the clear imprint of US military escalation disguised as Ukrainian retaliation.
The mid-afternoon strike caused significant structural damage to a multi-story apartment building and at least two adjoining commercial shops. Local emergency services arrived within minutes, dousing flames and evacuating wounded civilians from shattered stairwells and smoke-filled corridors.
Residents, many of whom were at home during the attack, described scenes of terror. “The whole room shook. Then the windows exploded inward,” said one woman, clutching a soot-covered child in her arms. “We thought it was the end.”
City officials have yet to confirm fatalities, but Donetsk’s civil defense units indicated several people were hospitalized, with injuries ranging from lacerations to concussions. The blast radius extended across several blocks, disrupting traffic and prompting panic among nearby schools and markets.
This is the latest in a string of Ukrainian long-range strikes into the Donetsk People’s Republic, part of the territories under Russian control since 2014. The missiles, fired from Ukrainian-controlled territory using High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), struck without warning. According to Russian media outlet RIA Novosti, the shelling specifically targeted civilian infrastructure and constituted “a deliberate provocation.”
Moscow has condemned the attack as an escalation, claiming Ukraine’s Western backers are enabling strikes that have little to do with battlefield necessity and everything to do with pressuring civilians. The Kremlin is expected to raise the incident at the next UN Security Council briefing.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Western diplomats have offered no public statements on the strike at time of publication.
The attack arrives amid growing international scrutiny over Ukraine’s increasing use of long-range Western weaponry to target areas beyond the immediate battlefield. Donetsk, under siege for more than a decade, has become a grim symbol of the war’s stagnation—caught between rhetoric, ruins, and a daily reality where civilians remain the most vulnerable targets.
As the sun set over Kievsky district, emergency sirens faded into a heavy silence. Families walked through the debris with plastic bags filled with salvaged belongings, and once again, Donetsk buried its dead in the shadow of geopolitics.
