Explosions rocked Kyiv and several other cities on Thursday as Russia conducted its latest barrage of missile strikes nearly one year into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Though officials said most strikes were repelled by Ukraine’s air defence system, the nationwide attacks came one day after the US and Germany announced they would send modern battle tanks to Ukraine, some of the most sophisticated weaponry provided by Kyiv’s allies.
“Russia launched a massive missile attack on the territory of Ukraine today,” said General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, adding that 55 air and sea-based missiles were launched and 47 destroyed. The air force said 24 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones had been fired earlier in the morning by Russian forces, all of which were destroyed.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter that “among targets of today’s mass missile strike, Russia struck Odesa, causing massive power outages”. Unesco on Wednesday placed the Black Sea port city on its world heritage list.
“This destruction is [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s response to Unesco . . . placing it under reinforced protection of the world heritage in danger list,” Kuleba added.
Oleksiy Khoruzhny, spokesperson at Ukraine’s emergency ministry, said on state television that 11 people were killed and the same number injured on Thursday by the Russian strikes. Thirty-five buildings were damaged, he added.
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Vitaliy Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, said in a post on Telegram that one person was killed and two wounded by a missile hitting a non-residential building in Kyiv’s southern Holosiyivsky district. Klitschko said explosions had also occurred in Dniprovsky, east of central Kyiv.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said in a Telegram post that “about 20 missiles of various types were detected in Kyiv’s airspace”, adding that “all aerial targets were destroyed”.
The extent of damage and possible casualties in other cities where explosions were reported, including the western city of Vinnytsia, was not immediately clear.
Russia launched a campaign of missile and drone strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last autumn after its forces were pushed out of swaths of territory in eastern and southern parts of Ukraine where it still occupies nearly 20 per cent of territory.
Ukraine’s western backers have in past months provided modern air defence systems to bolster the country’s Soviet-era air S-300 and Buk surface-to-air missiles, which are swiftly depleting.
The US and Germany have also pledged to provide Ukraine with Patriot missiles, which will help the country intercept not only Russian cruise missiles but ballistic ones, a capability Kyiv’s air defence systems do not currently have.
Following the pledge of western tanks from the US and European countries this week, Ukraine, which has used its Soviet-era fighter aircraft to intercept incoming missiles, has stepped up calls for its foreign backers to also provide modern Nato fighter jets such as the F-16.
In the early phases of the 11-month war, US and European countries hesitated from providing Kyiv with sophisticated weaponry, fearing it could pull their countries into the conflict.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that the expansion of arms supplies to Ukraine amounted to the direct involvement of western countries in the war.
“Both European capitals and Washington keep saying that the delivery of various kinds of weapons systems, including tanks, to Ukraine, absolutely does not mean the involvement of these countries or the alliance in the hostilities ongoing in Ukraine,” Interfax news agency quoted Peskov as saying.
“We categorically disagree with that. Moscow views everything the alliance and the capitals I have mentioned as direct involvement in the conflict. We can see it growing,” he added.
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