Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital on Sunday morning, hitting at least two residential buildings and killing one person, the mayor of Kyiv said. The attack came as Western leaders gathered in Europe this week prepared to reaffirm their support for Ukraine and condemn Russia.
Associated Press reporters in Kyiv saw emergency services battling the flames and rescuing civilians. The strikes also damaged a nearby kindergarten, where a crater carved out the yard.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said the missiles were Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from planes over the Caspian Sea, more than 1,500 kilometers away.
After conflicting reports of the first casualties, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person had been killed and six injured, including a seven-year-old girl and her mother, whose condition he described as moderately serious.
Early morning Russian airstrikes were the first to successfully target the capital since June 5. Two more explosions were later heard in Kyiv, but their cause was not immediately clear.
A member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksiy Goncharenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that preliminary information indicated that Russia had launched 14 missiles towards the capital region and Kyiv itself, suggesting that some had been intercepted.
In the town of Cherkassy, about 160 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, one person was killed and five injured in two Russian rocket fire, regional governor Ihor Taburets said.
NATO summit in Madrid
Klitschko told reporters he thought the airstrikes were “perhaps a symbolic attack” ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. Leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were in Germany on Sunday for a meeting of the world’s largest economies.
Leaders were due to announce new bans on Russian gold imports, the latest in a series of sanctions they hope will further isolate Russia economically. US President Joe Biden, while standing alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the host of the three-day meeting, was asked about his reaction to the latest missile strikes on Kyiv.
“It is rather their barbarism,” he replied.
A former commander of US forces in Europe said the strikes on Kyiv were aimed at humiliating Western leaders as they gather for G7 and NATO summits.
“Russia says, ‘We can do this all day. You are powerless to stop us,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of US Army forces in Europe, said. “The Russians humiliate the leaders of the West.”
In a telephone interview, Hodges said that Russia does not have unlimited stocks of precision missiles and that “if they use them, it will be for a particular purpose”.
He said it was difficult to say for sure whether apartment buildings were deliberately targeted or missiles strayed.
Battles in the East
Meanwhile, Russian troops fought to consolidate their gains in the east of the country as they fought to swallow the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province. Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said on Sunday that Russia was carrying out intense airstrikes on the town of Lysychansk, destroying its television tower and severely damaging a road bridge.
“There is a lot of destruction. Lysychansk is almost unrecognizable,” he wrote on Facebook.
Lysychansk and the nearby city of Severodonetsk have been at the center of a Russian offensive aimed at capturing the entire eastern region of Ukraine’s Donbass and destroying Ukrainian troops defending territory not yet controlled by separatists backed by Moscow.
Haidai confirmed on Saturday that Severodonetsk, including a chemical plant where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were locked up, had fallen to Russian and separatist fighters.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said late Saturday that separatist forces backed by Russia and Moscow now control Severodonetsk and the villages surrounding it. He said the attempt by Ukrainian forces to turn the Azot plant into a “tenacious center of resistance” had been thwarted.
Capturing Lysychansk would give Russian forces control of every major settlement in the province, an important step towards Russia’s goal of capturing all of Donbass. The Russians and the separatists control about half of Donetsk, the second province of Donbass.
On Saturday, Russia also launched dozens of missiles at several areas across the country away from the heart of eastern battles. Some of the missiles were fired by Russian Tu-22 long-range bombers deployed from Belarus for the first time, Ukraine’s air command said.
The bombardment preceded a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, during which Putin announced that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system.
Comments are closed.