Russia sent a clear message to Ukraine on Monday: its missiles can reach any corner of the country, including the heart of its capital. The center of kyiv has suffered during the morning the impact of multiple missiles that have caused the death of at least five civilians, have caused injuries to another 51 – 42 have been hospitalized, according to the mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko – and have caused serious damage to residential buildings, offices and public bodies such as the Ministry of Education. Moscow’s offensive has spread to other cities and comes just two days after Saturday’s sabotage of the Kerch Strait Bridge, Russia’s strategic infrastructure on Ukraine’s annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Other Ukrainian cities are being targeted this Monday by the Russian offensive. Against Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, multiple missiles have been fired, as reported by the city council. These projectiles have caused serious damage to railway infrastructure. Large cities closer to the front such as Mikolaiv, Dnipro or Zaporizhia are also being targeted by Russian missiles. Kirilo Tymoshenko, advisor to the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has specified that the missiles had as their main objective energy facilities in 12 provinces of the country. “This may affect the stability of the energy supply,” Timoshenko admitted in a statement, a warning of the Russian threat against the supply of electricity and gas in the cold months that have already begun in Ukraine.
Zelensky has listed through Telegram the provinces where missiles have fallen: kyiv (central-north), Khmelnitsky (west), Lviv (west), Dnipropetrovsk (east), Vinnitsa (center), Ivano-Frankivsk (east), Zaporizhia (east), Sumi (north), Kharkov (northeast), Zhytomyr (north) and Kirovohrad (center). “They want chaos and panic, they want to destroy our energy system,” the Ukrainian president wrote. In addition to the provinces cited by Zelenski, the governor of Poltava (north-center) has also denounced attacks on energy infrastructure in his territory, bringing at least 12 provinces bombed by Russia.
Life in kyiv had returned to a certain normality in recent months, with the return of a large part of the population that had fled at the beginning of the invasion. Not since the start of the war, in February and March, had the capital been hit so hard. The latest aggression occurred last June, when the invader’s rockets hit a residential neighborhood. At least seven missiles have fallen on various locations in the center of kyiv: on the headquarters of the Ministry of Education, in the university district; in a skyscraper adjoining the central train station, the headquarters of the DTEK energy company, owned by the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov; on the famous Crystal Bridge, an attraction in one of the busiest green and promenade areas in the city; in a playground and on an avenue in the neighborhood of government headquarters.
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The attack on kyiv occurred at rush hour, which has caused a number of victims yet to be determined, especially passers-by and people who were on their way to their jobs. In the university neighborhood there were a dozen destroyed vehicles, with traces of blood from their occupants, evacuated by the emergency services. “We are talking about a terrorist state,” said the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, in a video recorded on Bankova street in kyiv, where the presidential headquarters is located: “The Russian objective has been energy infrastructure throughout the country and the population. They have selected the time and places to cause the maximum possible damage.”
EL PAÍS has been able to visually confirm that Kalibr cruise missiles have hit the Ministry of Education. Missile explosions intercepted by anti-aircraft defense systems have also been heard. The chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, Valeri Zaluzhni, has reported that the invader had fired 75 missiles, from Russian territory and from the Black Sea (most of the Kalibr are fired from the ships of the Russian fleet). Of these 75 missiles, anti-aircraft defenses have intercepted 41, according to Zaluzhni. The Ukrainian police have raised to 10 the number of deaths under Russian bombs throughout Ukraine. That the number of deaths is lower than on other occasions, despite the high number of missiles fired, could be due to the fact that long-range precision missiles have been used, not only Kalibr but also the KH-101 and KH-555.
The Ukrainian authorities have added that the aggression has also been committed with 17 Iranian-made drones, one of the weapons that Russia has been using most intensively in recent weeks, and that they would have taken off from Crimea and Belarus.
The Russian offensive comes 48 hours after a truck bomb caused serious damage to the Kerch Strait bridge, one of the main symbols of Russia’s occupation of Crimea. The bridge, a pharaonic work inaugurated in 2018 to integrate the illegally annexed peninsula into Russia in 2014, is a fundamental means of supplying resources for the invading troops in the provinces of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Monday’s wave of missiles will not be the last if kyiv carries out more sabotage in what it considers its territory. “In the event that other terrorist attacks are attempted to be carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation, the responses will be harsh and will be equivalent to the level of threats,” the president stated before his Security Council at a meeting convened for following the attack on the Crimean bridge.
According to Putin, the plan was proposed by the General Staff and envisaged “a massive attack with long-range precision weapons against Ukraine’s energy facilities, military leadership and communications.” Last Saturday the appointment of General Sergei Surovikin as head of the Russian armed forces involved in this war was announced. The Russian Aerospace Forces commander’s resume previously included bombing campaigns in Syria.
“It is impossible to leave the crimes of the kyiv regime unanswered,” Putin said on Monday. The Russian president accused Ukraine of having carried out up to three attacks on the power lines of a nuclear power plant located in the Kursk region, as well as of having tried to sabotage its gas pipeline that crosses Turkey.
Putin and his General Staff were being criticized in recent hours by his most ultra-nationalist environment, demanding revenge for the sabotage on the Crimean bridge. kyiv has not officially acknowledged responsibility for this action, although several government officials have hinted that they were behind it. If the Ukrainian authorship is confirmed, the blow against the Kerch bridge, one of the most protected infrastructures in the world, would be one of the most daring operations of the Ukrainian defense, which proves that no Russian asset is safe in the invaded territories.
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