KYIV: Ahead of Moscow’s much-anticipated Victory Day celebration, which commemorates the anniversary of its defeat of Nazi Germany, Russia launched a massive wave of attacks on Kyiv and around Ukraine, causing havoc and casualties.
Russian missiles set a food storage facility on fire in the Black Sea city of Odesa, and explosions were recorded in a number of other Ukrainian districts, according to Ukrainian officials, who stated at least five people were injured as a result of the attacks on Kyiv.
The new attacks happen as Moscow gets ready for its Victory Day parade on Tuesday, a significant anniversary for President Vladimir Putin who has declared that Russia would defeat a Ukraine that was allegedly under the control of a new Nazi incarnation by invoking the spirit of the Soviet army that defeated Nazi German forces.
Following reports that Russia’s Wagner mercenary squad decided against retreat from Bakhmut, Ukraine’s top commander in charge of the city’s defences warned that Russia increased shelling in an effort to capture it by Tuesday.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the injuries on his Telegram messaging channel, saying that three persons were hurt in explosions in the Solomyanskyi neighbourhood of Kyiv and two more were hurt when drone debris fell onto the Sviatoshyn area, all west of the city.
While there was no fire as a result of drone debris landing on a runway at the Zhuliany airport, one of the Ukrainian capital’s two passenger airports, emergency services were on the scene, according to the military administration of Kyiv.
It further claimed that drone debris seemed to have damaged a two-story structure in the Shevchenkivskyi neighbourhood of downtown Kyiv. There was no information available on possible casualties.
Witnesses who spoke to Reuters claimed to have heard many explosions in Kyiv, where local authorities said that the city’s air defence systems were thwarting the strikes. The number of drones that were fired at Kyiv was unclear at first.
In what he said was a Russian strike on a food warehouse, among other things, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, uploaded images of a massive edifice completely consumed in flames on his Telegram channel.
Following hours of air raid warnings throughout about two-thirds of Ukraine, media reports of explosion noises in Kherson, Ukraine’s southernmost area, and the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine’s southeast, have surfaced.
Local official in Zaporizhzhia Vladimir Rogov said that Russian soldiers had attacked a warehouse and a position of Ukrainian troops in the nearby town of Orikhiv. The report could not be independently verified by Reuters.
Separately, the regional military administration said in a Facebook post that Russian soldiers bombarded eight places in the Sumy area of northeastern Ukraine on Sunday.
Strikes against Russian-controlled locations have also increased over the previous two weeks, particularly in Crimea. Ukraine claims that demolishing the enemy’s infrastructure is a prelude to its long-anticipated land invasion, without acknowledging any involvement in such strikes.
On February 24, 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine, claiming it was a “special military operation” to protect Russia from neo-Nazis there. Kyiv and its supporters, however, claim it was only a land grab.
Thousands of people were killed and millions were forced to flee the nation as a result of the invasion, which began the worst conflict in Europe since World War Two.
