Russia yesterday confirmed it carried out an air strike on Kyiv during a visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks and one that killed a journalist.
Vera Gyrych, a producer for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, died when a Russian missile slammed into the house where she lived in Kyiv, the media group said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said it had deployed “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” that it added “have destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv.”
Photo: AP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the strikes, which immediately followed his talks with Guterres, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything that the organization represents.”
Earlier that day, Guterres had toured Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv where Moscow is alleged to have committed war crimes. Russia denies killing civilians.
Germany slammed the “inhumane” attack that showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “no respect whatsoever for international law.”
In a residential part of Kyiv, Agence France-Presse correspondents saw one building in flames and black smoke pouring into the air after the Russian strikes.
“I heard the sound of two rockets and two explosions. It was a sound similar to a flying plane, and then two explosions with an interval of three to four seconds,” Oleksandr Stroganov, 34, said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said there had been “two hits in the Shevchenkovsky District,” with one striking “the lower floors of a residential building.”
“It is a war zone, but it is shocking that it happened close to us,” said UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman Saviano Abreu, who was travelling with Guterres, adding that the delegation was safe.
Guterres, who arrived in Kyiv after talks in Moscow with Putin, had called war “evil” after visiting Bucha and demanded the Kremlin cooperate with an International Criminal Court investigation into the accusations.
Ukrainian prosecutors said they have pinpointed more than 8,000 alleged war crime cases and have opened investigations into 10 Russian soldiers for suspected atrocities in Bucha, where dozens of bodies in civilian clothes were found following Moscow’s retreat.
Those cases involve “killing civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture” and “sexual crimes” reported during Russia’s occupation of various parts of Ukraine, prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova told a German broadcaster.
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