Russia launched missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during Wednesday morning’s rush hour, killing three people, injuring at least a dozen more and setting blazes across the capital, Ukrainian officials said.
By Olena Harmash and Yurii Kovalenko
KYIV – Russia launched missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during Wednesday morning’s rush hour, killing three people, injuring at least a dozen more and setting blazes across the capital, Ukrainian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that two people had been killed in the capital Kyiv and one person in Mykolayiv in the south of the country.
“Another massive attack against our state. Six regions were under the enemy’s strike. All our services are now working to cope with the consequences of this terror,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Ukrainian air defence shot down 44 missiles and drones out of 64 launched by Russia in several waves of the attack, said Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s armed forces commander.
European Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell who is in Kyiv on a two-day visit to underline the EU’s support for Ukraine, posted a picture on X social media platform from a shelter.
“Starting my morning in the shelter as air alarms are sounding across Kyiv,” he said.
Borrell is discussing with top Ukrainian officials both EU military and financial support, as well as Kyiv’s progress on its reform path in its bid to join the 27-member bloc.
Kyiv city officials said that at least 14 people were injured in different parts of the capital. Firefighters were extinguishing several large fires. Emergency workers were working to rescue people from a multi-story apartment building in Golosiivskyi district in the south-west of the capital.
Debris from a Russian missile also damaged several power lines resulting in electricity cut-offs in parts of Kyiv. About 40 private cars and a car repair shop were damaged.
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor for the western Lviv region, said an industrial facility was hit in the city of Drogobych.
Oleh Synehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, said Russian missiles struck non-residential infrastructure in Kharkiv city, the administrative centre of the region.
All of Ukraine was under air raid alert for over two hours. The first blasts were heard just before 7am (0500 GMT) in Kyiv.
“We are being shelled, we endure. This is not the worst that could happen. People on the front lines have it the worst, they have to fend off the invaders. We will definitely survive,” Vitalii Bachynskyi, 40, an IT worker, told Reuters in a shelter where he was taking cover with his wife and two children.
“It does not break our spirit in any way. We will wait for the victory.”
– REUTERS
