US Embassy in Kyiv closes amid ‘significant’ air attack threat

The US Embassy in Kyiv will be closed on Wednesday amid a threat of what it called a “significant” Russian airstrike on the Ukrainian capital, it has said in a statement.

“The US Embassy in Kyiv has received specific information of a potential significant air attack on November 20. Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy will be closed, and Embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place,” the statement published on the embassy’s website read.

The embassy also encouraged US citizens to prepare to take shelter if an air raid alert is announced, though it did not provide further details of the potential threat.

On Tuesday, the embassy issued a separate warning recommending US citizens in Ukraine exercise “heightened caution” and prepare for electricity and water outages amid “persistent” Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Opened in 1992, the US Embassy in Ukraine temporarily relocated its operations to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv shortly ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, before reopening in Kyiv in May that year.

Wednesday’s warning came just a day after Ukraine used US-supplied ATACMS missiles to hit targets on Russian territory for the first time, striking a military facility near the city of Karachev in Russia’s western Bryansk region in the early hours of Tuesday.

The Biden administration had earlier lifted its long-standing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-supplied weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory in a significant shift in policy largely prompted by Russia’s deployment of North Korean troops to fight alongside its army.

Speaking at a press conference during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Bryansk facility strike showed that Western countries wanted “escalation” in the war and promised Russia would “respond accordingly” to what he described as a “new stage of the West’s war against Russia”.