Russia targets Kyiv with missiles as UN chief visits Zelensky
Ukraine condemns attack as deliberate attempt to intimidate Guterres a day after he talked with Putin
RUSSIA fired missiles into the centre of Kyiv as the UN secretary-general was visiting for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukraine president.
Vitaly Klitschko, the mayor of the city, said two targets had been hit in the central Shevchensky district, including an apartment building, last night and that there were wounded.
António Guterres had arrived in the Ukrainian capital earlier in the day following talks in Moscow with Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian officials immediately condemned the attack as a deliberate attempt to intimidate him.
“The day before, he was sitting at a long table in the Kremlin and today explosions are above his head. Postcard from Moscow?” said Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr Zelensky.
Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said the prime minister of Bulgaria was also in the city when the strike took place and condemned it as “heinous barbarism”.
The strike came after Russia repeated it would not be deterred by the presence of Western officials there.
“As we have warned, Russia’s armed forces are ready to carry out strikes with high-precision, long-range weapons on the centres of decision-making in Kyiv,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesman, said in Moscow.
“The presence of advisers from one Western country will not necessarily be a problem if Russia decided to respond.”
The warning appeared to be directed at Britain, which she said was trying to “provoke” Ukraine into attacking Russia. She said it would face an “immediate response” for doing so.
James Heapey, the Armed Forces minister, told the BBC that it was legitimate to strike military and logistical targets inside Russia.
Russia has seen a flurry of unexplained attacks on ammunition and fuel depots in regions bordering Ukraine in recent weeks. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the fires.
The threat followed a series of bizarre
‘Either we lose or World World Three begins ... that all this will end in a nuclear strike seems more probable’
and apocalyptic predictions issued by senior figures in Moscow as frustration grows with the invasion’s slow pace.
Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, yesterday claimed the US and Poland would seek to annex a chunk of Ukraine that was controlled by Poland between the First and Second World Wars.
“The specifics of the upcoming mission are currently being discussed with the Biden administration,” he said in remarks carried by Izvestia, a Russian newspaper. “According to preliminary agreements, it will take place without a Nato mandate, but with the participation of ‘willing states’.” He offered no evidence for the claim.
Earlier,the chief of Russia’s most powerful propaganda mouthpiece said the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West would “most probably” end in a nuclear strike.
“Either we lose in Ukraine or World World Three begins: I personally think World War Three is the likeliest scenario,” Margarita Simonyan, the head of state-owned TV network RT, said on prime time Russian television on Wednesday night.
“The most improbable outcome – that all this will end in a nuclear strike – seems more probable to me than another course of events. We will go to heaven while they will simply croak.”
Ms Simonyan has close ties to the Kremlin and heads both RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media holding, which runs RIA Novosti and Sputnik, two of the main state-owned news agencies.
Meanwhile, Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Russian security council, said that the invasion of Ukraine was really a struggle with the West for Russia’s very survival.
The comments have been interpreted as both a warning to the West and an attempt to ready the Russian public for possible escalation, including a formal declaration of war and mass conscription.
Russia officially considers the invasion a “special military operation”. Mr Putin hinted at use of nuclear weapons in an address to the Russian parliament on Wednesday, saying he would consider interference by the West “an unacceptable strategic threat to Russia”. “They should know that our response will be lightning-fast,” he said.
Russia’s offensive in the Donbas continued to intensify yesterday, with the Ukrainian military reporting heavy shelling across the front.
A US defence official said the Russians were making “incremental” progress of only a couple of kilometres a day in an apparent effort to outrun supply lines, as they did during their disastrous assault on Kyiv.
Ukrainian forces also have pushed them back in some areas, he adds.
Meanwhile, Ukraine filed the first war crimes charges against Russian soldiers for taking hostages and abusing them in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
Ten NCOS and privates from the 64th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, the unit that occupied Bucha during the failed attempt to capture Kyiv in March, were charged in absentia yesterday.
“The suspects deprived people of the opportunity to move freely, put them on their knees, blindfolded them with adhesive tape and rags, and tied their hands with plastic clamps. The victims were threatened with murder and deliberately shot in their direction,” the Ukrainain government said.
The bodies of hundreds of civilians were discovered in Bucha after Ukrainian forces retook the town. Survivors say they were also held captive, raped, tortured and denied food.
A puppet administration in Russiaoccupied Kherson said it would switch its payments to the rouble from May, in the strongest indication to date that Moscow is planning to occupy or annex parts of Ukraine for the long-term.
Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of Kherson’s Russia-controlled “civilianmilitary administration”, told Russian news agencies that the region would start using roubles starting next month before fully discarding the Ukrainian currency in four months’ time.
“Reintegrating the Kherson region back into a Nazi Ukraine is out of the question,” he said.
He denied reports that Russia was planning a referendum to set up a “separatist” republic. Locals have told The Daily Telegraph that a referendum was planned for Wednesday but later postponed until May. They said Russian soldiers are banning people from leaving until the sham vote has occurred.