Explosions heard in centre of Ukraine capital Kyiv
Explosions rang out in the centre of Ukraine’s capital on Thursday, following air alerts prompted by Russian missiles and drones, a day after several civilians were killed on both sides of the conflict.
Around 10 loud blasts were heard by AFP journalists from 5am (0300 GMT) onwards in Kyiv, as well as air defence fire.
Ukrainian air defence forces shot down “about three dozen enemy missiles, including ballistic missiles, over Kyiv and in the vicinity of the capital”, the city’s military administration said on Telegram, adding that the raid had lasted three hours.
It said 10 people were wounded, including an 11-year-old girl and a 38-year-old man, with two taken to hospital.
Rocket fragments fell onto a kindergarten in the Sviatoshynskyi district of the capital, according to Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, while an apartment building and a car caught fire in other areas of the city.
The last major Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital took place in early February.
On Wednesday, a fresh round of aerial bombardments left civilians dead in Ukraine and Russia as strikes escalate in the third year of the war.
Ukrainian authorities reported five people killed by a Russian missile in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with another nine injured and five more unaccounted for as search and rescue operations continued into the night.
Kyiv’s army is facing manpower and ammunition shortages amid political wrangling in the US Congress that has raised uncertainty over the future of Western support.
Directly across the border from Kharkiv, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said multiple attacks had killed three people.
Since Wednesday, the region has come under “massive strikes, including with the use of multiple rocket launcher systems”, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram, referring to a border district targeted by air attacks and ground incursions by armed groups from Ukraine.
Two people were killed there, and another man was killed in the regional capital, also called Belgorod, when shrapnel from a shelling attack hit his car, Gladkov said.
Kyiv has escalated drone, rocket and artillery fire on the region over the last two weeks, in a wave of attacks launched in the lead-up to Russia’s presidential elections. ProUkrainian paramilitaries have also attempted armed raids across the border.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to restore order to the border regions, as the fallout from his invasion continues to spill into Russian territory.
Russian forces have secured their first territorial gains in almost a year and this week claimed to have made further advances in the eastern Donetsk region.