Explosions yesterday rocked multiple cities across Ukraine, including missile strikes on the capital, Kyiv, for the first time in months, hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin called a Saturday explosion on the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea a “terrorist act” masterminded by Ukrainian special services.
At least eight people were killed and 24 were injured in just one of the Kyiv strikes, according to preliminary information, said Rostyslav Smirnov, an adviser to the Ukrainian ministry of internal affairs.
Blasts were reported in the city’s Shevchenko District, a large area in the center of Kyiv that includes the historic old town as well as several government offices, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Photo: Reuters
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said he was cutting short a trip to Africa following Russian missiles strikes across his country.
Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko posted a photograph on Twitter showing that at least one explosion occurred near the main building of the Kyiv National University in central Kyiv.
After the first early morning strikes in Kyiv, more loud explosions were heard later in the morning in an intensification of Russia’s attack that could spell a major escalation in the war.
Elsewhere, Russia targeted civilian areas and energy infrastructure as air-raid sirens sounded in every region of Ukraine, except Russia-annexed Crimea, for four straight hours.
Associated Press journalists in the center of Dnipro city saw the bodies of multiple people killed at an industrial site on the city’s outskirts. Windows in the area had been blown out and glass littered the street.
Ukrainian media also reported explosions in a number of other locations, including the western city of Lviv that has been a refuge for many people fleeing the fighting in the east, as well as Kharkiv, Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr and Kropyvnytskyi.
Kharkiv was hit three times, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
The strikes knocked out the electricity and water supply.
Energy infrastructure was also hit in Lviv, Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.
The multiple strikes came a few hours before Putin was due to hold a meeting with his security council, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its eight-month milestone and the Kremlin reels from humiliating battlefield setbacks in areas it is trying to annex amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive in recent weeks.
A day earlier, Putin had called the attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea a terrorist act carried out by Ukrainian special services. In a meeting on Sunday with the chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Putin said “there’s no doubt it was a terrorist act directed at the destruction of critically important civilian infrastructure.”
The Kerch Bridge is important to Russia strategically, as a military supply line to its forces in Ukraine, and symbolically, as an emblem of its claims on Crimea. No one has claimed responsibility for damaging the 19km bridge.
Amid the onslaught, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on his Telegram account that Russia is “trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth.”
“Please do not leave [bomb] shelters,” he wrote. “Let’s hold on and be strong.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
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