Explosions lit up the horizon, glowing red as dawn broke

RUSSIAN missiles litter Kyiv's holiday streets with balls of fire. The city was still dark and its inhabitants counting the days til Christmas when a barrage of ballistic missiles shattered the morning silence.

- JOHN MARONE

Explosion after explosion lit up the horizon, glowing red as dawn broke, while the acrid smell of burnt munitions filled the cold morning air.

At least one man was killed and several people treated in hospital in Kyiv after a ballistic missile struck a business centre in the middle of the city.

Directly opposite that building - its own facade charred and mangled, its windows now dark holes - stands a twin-spired gothic church miraculously minimally damaged by the Russian air strike.

A banner stretched just above the entrance of St Nicholas Catholic Church ironically reads, "Save this Church from Ruin" in reference to a continuing effort to renovate the church following a destructive fire in 2021, just months before Russia's all-out attack on the capital.

"This is a message from God," exclaims Father Pavel, the parish priest, who points out how all the buildings around his church were hit worse by the attack.