Black smoke was visible for miles around after the attack on two outlying districts of kyiv. Ukraine says the strike hit a train repair shop; Moscow said it had destroyed tanks sent by Eastern European countries to Ukraine.
At least one person was hospitalized, but no deaths were reported immediately. The strike was a sudden reminder of war in a capital where normal life has largely returned since Russian forces were driven from its outskirts in March.
“The Kremlin is resorting to new insidious attacks. Today’s missile strikes on kyiv have only one goal – to kill as many people as possible,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhailo Podolyak tweeted.
Ukraine says Russia carried out the strike using long-range aerial missiles fired from heavy bombers as far away as the Caspian Sea – a far more valuable weapon than the tanks Russia claims to have hit.
Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said a Russian cruise missile had flown “at a critical altitude” above the country’s second-largest nuclear power plant.
Sunday’s attack was the first major strike on kyiv since late April, when a missile killed a journalist. In recent weeks, Russia has focused its destructive power primarily on the eastern and southern frontlines, though Moscow occasionally strikes elsewhere in what it calls a campaign to degrade Ukraine’s military infrastructure and block Western arms deliveries.
UKRAINE CLAIMS HALF OF SIEVIERODONETSK
In recent weeks, Russia has concentrated its forces on the small eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, fighting one of the biggest land battles of the war in an attempt to capture one of the two eastern provinces it claims on behalf of the separatist proxies.
After steadily retreating into the city in recent days, Ukraine mounted a counterattack there which it said took the Russians by surprise. After recapturing part of the city, Ukrainian forces now control half of it and continue to push back the Russians, said Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region which includes Sievierodonetsk.
These claims could not be independently verified. Both sides claim to have inflicted huge casualties on Sievierodonetsk, a battle that could determine which side will come out on top in a protracted war of attrition in the months to come.
In another sign that Ukraine repelled the Russian advance, Gaidai said evacuations resumed on Sunday in the Ukrainian-held part of Luhansk province and 98 people escaped. Russian forces have been trying for weeks to cut off the main road to encircle Ukrainian troops there, and the evacuations were halted last week after a journalist was killed by shelling.
Britain’s defense minister said on Sunday that Ukrainian counterattacks on Sievierodonetsk in the past 24 hours were likely to dampen any operational momentum gained by Russia. Moscow is deploying ill-equipped separatist fighters to the city to limit the risk to its regular forces, he added.
In neighboring Donetsk province, which Moscow also claims on behalf of its separatist proxies, Russian forces have advanced in recent days into territory north of the Siverskiy Donets river, in anticipation of what Ukraine plans to push over the great city of Sloviansk.
Ukrainian officials said at least eight people were killed and 11 injured in Russian shelling in the province overnight.
In a speech to 35,000 people in Rome on Sunday, Pope Francis noted that more than 100 days had passed since “the beginning of the armed aggression against Ukraine” and called the war a “denial of the dream of God”.
WEAPONS THAT CRACK LIKE NUTS
In an interview with Russian state television, President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would hit new targets if the West supplied Ukraine with longer-range missiles. But he also dismissed the impact of advanced rocket systems promised by Washington to Ukraine last week, saying these would not affect the course of the fighting.
The United States is already training Ukrainian troops with their HIMARS rocket launchers, which would be capable of hitting positions deep behind Russian lines. kyiv claims that such weapons will help it turn the tide of the war.
In excerpts from his interview quoted by Russian news agencies before they aired, Mr Putin said that if the West provides longer-range missiles, “we will hit the targets we haven’t hit yet”, without specify targets.
Russian forces hit Ukrainian weapons systems and “cracked them like nuts”, he said, dismissing the new US rockets as “intended to compensate for the losses of this military equipment” and unlikely to alter the situation. balance of the battlefield.
On Saturday, kyiv berated French President Emmanuel Macron for saying it was important not to “humiliate” Moscow.
Ukraine has bristled at what it sees as pressure from some European allies to cede territory to secure a ceasefire.
“Calls to avoid the humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and all other countries that would call out for it,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted in response to Macron’s remarks.