Four people were killed in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, by a Russian strike on Saturday, according to municipal officials. The foreign minister of Ukraine described the incident as “heinous” and used ballistic missiles.
According to the regional governor, a separate nocturnal attack on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia injured ten people, while at least three more were injured.
Despite being regularly targeted by Russian drones and missiles, Kyiv rarely suffers fatalities because the city is well-defended by air defense systems and can repel attacks more effectively than other parts of the nation.
“We already have four dead in Shevchenkivsky district,” Tymur Tkachenko, chief of Kyiv’s military administration, said in a Telegram post, referring to a central section of the capital.
“Yet another proof that Putin wants war, not peace,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said in a post on social media.
“He must be forced to accept a just peace through strength — maximum economic and military pressure,” he added.
The air force claimed to have shot down 24 Russian attack drones and two Iskander ballistic missiles in the course of the night.
However, it claimed that the downed missiles “fell” on the central Shevchenkivsky neighborhood of Kyiv, impairing residential structures, an industrial building, a metro tunnel, and local water supplies for a while.
An AFP reporter in Kyiv observed the burned-out remnants of a bombed-out McDonald’s restaurant and floods on the street where the attack occurred.
In social media updates, the mayor of the capital stated that air defenses had been in place all night.
In recent months, Kyiv has increased its aircraft operations on Russian military and energy sites, which coincided with the attack.
The army of Kyiv has recently attacked a number of Russian oil depots, including two significant assaults on a facility close to a military airfield in the Saratov region of Russia that set off fires that lasted for days.
As part of a series of attacks against the southern city, Russian soldiers also struck Zaporizhzhia overnight in Ukraine. Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov claimed that Russia had “cynically” targeted the city center “while everyone was sleeping.”
According to him, one of the ten injured was in critical condition.