KYIV: Ukrainian officials blamed Russia Tuesday for a missile attack on the capital Kyiv, saying residential buildings were hit as air raid sirens sounded across the country.
“There is an attack on the capital. According to preliminary information, two residential buildings were hit in the Pechersk district,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a statement on social media.
“Several missiles were shot down over Kyiv by air defense systems. Medics and rescuers are at the scene of the strikes. More details later,” he added.
The deputy head of the president’s office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said in a statement online that the missiles had been fired by Russian forces.
He distributed footage of the apparent scene of the attacks, with a blaze emerging from a Soviet-era, five-story residential building.
“The danger has not passed. Stay in shelters,” he added.
The Ukraine presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said the attack was a response to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the G20, during which he called on leaders to pressure the Kremlin to end its invasion.
“Does anyone seriously think that the Kremlin really wants peace? It wants obedience. But at the end of the day, terrorists always lose,” Yermak said.
Russian forces have in recent weeks been targeting energy infrastructure across Ukraine and has launched barrages of missiles and sent swarms of drones on the capital.
Kyiv was last targeted by Russian forces nearly one month ago on October 17.
Ukraine blames Russia for missile attack on Kyiv housing blocks
https://arab.news/wmeud
Ukraine blames Russia for missile attack on Kyiv housing blocks
- Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said: “Several missiles were shot down over Kyiv by air defence systems”
- The attack was a response to President Volodymyr Zelensky's address to the G20
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
