Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said.
Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut.
A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals.
Photo: Reuters
“Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not leave shelters,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on Telegram yesterday.
Lviv Oblast Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said that Stryi District, south of the city of Lviv, near the Polish border, was also attacked.
Ukraine was earlier placed under a nationwide air alert that warned of cruise missiles being launched from Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers. The alert was lifted about two hours later.
Sergiy Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said the missiles were fired at the capital “in groups” in the third predawn attack in four days.
Preliminary reports suggested there were no casualties or damage, he said, and the city’s air defenses had hit “about a dozen” missiles.
“The enemy continues massive missile terror against Ukraine,” Popko wrote on Telegram. “It does not give up its goal of destroying Kyiv at any cost.”
US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink also addressed the increased frequency of recent attacks.
“Russia continues to indiscriminately launch drones and missiles with no regard for millions of civilians, violating international law,” Brink wrote on X.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy said that about 20 missiles and seven Iranian-made Shahed drones were fired at the region.
Meanwhile, for about 40 seconds, “Polish airspace was breached by one of the cruise missiles fired in the night by the air forces ... of the Russian Federation,” the Polish Armed Forces wrote on X.
“The object flew through Polish airspace above the village of Oserdow [Lublin Voivodeship] and stayed for 39 seconds,” the statement added.
The missile was tracked by military radar throughout its flight, the army said.
“The Polish army is constantly monitoring the situation on Ukrainian territory and remains on permanent alert to ensure the security of Polish airspace,” said the army.
Poland activated its air defence procedures during the incident, the operational command of the armed forces said in its statement.
A similar incident occurred on Dec. 29 last year, when a Russian missile penetrated Polish airspace for several minutes before returning to Ukraine.
In November 2022, two people were killed when a Ukrainian air-defense missile fell on the Polish village of Przewodow, close to the Ukrainian border.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis