After months of silence, the war has returned to Kyiv and many Ukrainian cities far from the front lines. The first reports speak of 8 dead – the number is expected to rise sharply.
Destroyed cars in downtown Kiev.
After months of apparent normality, heavy explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Monday morning. Videos and pictures show the consequences of rocket attacks in the city center, which had so far been spared by the war: Cars burned on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, for example. The Russian attacks also destroyed a kindergarten and a pedestrian bridge in Khreshtschati Park, which was opened only a few years ago. Russian military bloggers say some of the attacks targeted the intelligence agency’s headquarters and one of President Zelensky’s offices.
Mayor Vitaly Klitschko urged residents of the capital to remain in shelters as the attacks continued. Streets in the city center are closed and the subway has stopped operating. The stations, some of which were nuclear bomb-proof, now serve as air-raid shelters, as they did at the beginning of the war. Videos show that there are large crowds of people.
missiles and drones
In the first reports, officials spoke of at least 8 dead and 24 injured in the capital alone. The number is likely to rise sharply, especially since Moscow is bombing locations across Ukraine. The talk so far is of rocket attacks in three waves. Officials said 47 cruise missiles were used in the last one, some of which were shot down. There are also said to have been intensive drone attacks from Belarus.
It wasn’t just centers close to the front such as Dnipro, Mikolajiv and Zaporizhia that were hit. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the Russians also targeted cities in the center and west, specifically damaging the energy supply. Large-scale power failures are reported from Zhitomir and Poltava. The water supply was also cut off in Kharkiv. According to information from the mayor, the internet was partially down in the western city of Lviv.
Attacks on critical civilian infrastructure are not new; Again and again the Russians destroyed power plants and other facilities central to the supply of the population. But the current intensity can only be understood as retaliation for the attack on the Kerch Bridge at the weekend: Vladimir Putin had actually announced such steps on Sunday evening when he classified it as a terrorist attack against Russia’s critical infrastructure.
A bloodbath at the request of the hardliners
The Russian president is under considerable pressure from radical nationalists. For months, they have accused the military leadership of not waging the war hard enough and, in response to the bombing of the Crimean bridge, have also explicitly called for attacks against Kyiv and against the Ukrainian secret service allegedly responsible. Now the Russian leadership is trying to appease the hardliners – and is once again causing a bloodbath among innocent civilians in Ukraine.