Russia launched yet another airstrike on Kiev early Thursday, killing at least three people, including a child, another night of terror for the residents of the Ukrainian capital, which has been targeted relentlessly for a month.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, the anti-aircraft defense destroyed the ten Russian missiles that targeted the city, but the debris, which fell in the vicinity of a pediatric clinic in the Desniansky district, killed three people and injured 16 others. .
According to Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, the three deceased were trying to access an air-raid shelter but it was closed despite the current alert.
“Three people died in Kyiv, two women and a nine-year-old girl trying to enter a closed shelter. A closed shelter in wartime is not just indifference, it is a crime “, he denounced.
The husband of one of the victims, Yaroslav Ryabtchouk explained to AFP that usually this basement is accessible, but that this time no one opened them.
He said he left to find the security guard at the nearby clinic when the explosion happened. “When I came back, there was a lot of blood, children, women lying there, there was screaming, dust,” he said.
“I have children who no longer have a mother,” he asserts.
The Kiev military administration, which welcomed the destruction in flight of the ten cruise and ballistic missiles, regretted on the other hand that “the fall of debris causes human losses and destruction”.
Russia has been increasing drone and missile attacks on kyiv since early May, often at night, a tactic denounced by Ukraine as aimed at terrorizing the civilian population. Moscow, as usual, claims that its salvoes are always “successfully” aimed at military targets.
But more than a year after its invasion of Ukraine, the military campaign wanted by President Vladimir Putin is bogged down, and Russia is seeing an increase in attacks on its soil, with an unprecedented incursion last week into the region of Belgorod and a drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday.
Thursday morning again, the locality of “Chebekino faces uninterrupted strikes” with rocket launchers, according to Governor Vitacheslav Gladkov who reported eight wounded.
“The lives of civilians, of the population are threatened. Above all, in Chebekino and in the neighboring villages”, underlined Mr. Gladkov, specifying that evacuations would be organized as soon as “the situation will have calmed down”.
According to him, “the enemy has not penetrated the territory of the Belgorod region”, but “mass strikes are underway”.
On Wednesday, Russia announced that it was evacuating hundreds of children from villages due to intensified bombardments in the border region of Belgorod.
These attacks illustrate the difficulty of Russian forces to protect its border and its lines, at the very moment when the Ukrainians are preparing a vast offensive to liberate the occupied territories of southern and eastern Ukraine.
kyiv, on the other hand, claims not to carry out raids on Russian territory, noting the existence of anti-Putin armed groups.
The armed units that claimed responsibility for the attack last week in the Belgorod region for two days are indeed led by Russians opposed to the Kremlin, but the incursion was launched from Ukraine, before being repelled by Russian air force and artillery.
Since then, border areas in the Belgorod region have been bombarded daily.
On Wednesday, a drone also fell within the perimeter of an oil refinery in Ilski, in the Krasnodar region (south), without causing any casualties or damage, local authorities announced.
This same refinery had already been targeted in early May by two drone attacks which had caused fires.
06/01/2023 12:54:26 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
