Kiev, Aug. 1, (dpa/GNA) – The Russian army shelled a hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing a doctor on his first day of work, the head of the regional health department said.
The attack injured a nurse and three other medical professionals, damaged two floors of the hospital, including the surgery and ear, nose and throat (ENT) departments, and destroyed the operating theatre, according to Tetyana Karchevych, the head of the regional health department.
The Kherson attack was preceded by an overnight Russian attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with kamikaze drones, which nearly completely destroying a three-storey dormitory, the regional prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.
A sports facility was also hit, and a security guard was injured.
Five Shahed drones hit Kharkiv during the night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on his Telegram channel in the morning.
“All authorities are at the sites of the impacts, work is under way,” he wrotes.
The prosecutor’s photos published on the internet show suspected fragments of a drone with the words “Geran-2” written in Russian.
Russia uses Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones under its own name “Geran” to conceal Tehran’s involvement. Moscow and Iran have long cooperated militarily.
Meanwhile in Moscow, a skyscraper in the Moscow City district was hit again overnight after being attacked on Sunday by drones. There was damage on the 21st floor of the tower and 150 square metres of the façade glazing had been destroyed, but there was no information on casualties, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel.
Moscow’s Vnukovo airport in the south-west of the Russian capital was temporarily closed for departures and arrivals, TASS reported. Flights were being diverted.
The Russian Defence Ministry spoke of a “terrorist attack by the Kiev regime.” Two drones were shot down by anti-aircraft fire in the Moscow region. One drone was disabled by the radio-electronic defence system, lost control and crashed in Moscow City. This contradicted the information previously given by Mayor Sobyanin, which suggested a targeted hit.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it is the responsibility of the Defence Ministry to ensure that Moscow is protected. On Monday, he described the attacks as an “act of desperation” on the part of Ukraine because the country lacked military success in its counteroffensive.
Maria Zakharova accused the Ukrainian leadership of using methods similar to those of international terrorist organizations. She compared the comparatively low damage in Moscow with the unprecedented terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.
“But the method is the same,” she claimed on the Youtube channel SolovievLive. In Moscow, too, a civilian building with offices with no connection to the military had been chosen, she said comparing the two.
These were “extremist and fascist methods,”, Zakharova said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was trying to extort even more military aid from the United States as a “sponsor of terrorism,” she said. Kiev has not officially admitted to the drone attacks.
In Ukraine, expert Ivan Stupak, who worked for the SBU intelligence service for many years, said that the Russian defence system could not repel such attacks.
“The attacks against the Moscow City [building] are considered incredibly painful for the Kremlin because this shows the inability to protect the heart of the capital,” he said on state television.
The objects flew unnoticed, had very specific targets and hit windows, Stupak said. On Sunday, an office of the Digitalization Ministry was hit. That had gone flawlessly – straight into the “weak point” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s system, he said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry also reported that it had repelled three attacks by Ukrainian naval drones on its Black Sea fleet.
Ukraine tried to attack the patrol ships Sergei Kotov and Vasily Bykov with three unmanned explosive boats. The drones were destroyed by the Russian ships’ on-board weapons, the ministry said.
Tensions in the Black Sea have increased since Russia’s cancellation in mid-July of an agreement to allow grain shipments from Ukrainian ports.
On Tuesday, Ukraine said it had reached an agreement with Croatia on exporting its grain via ports on the Adriatic Sea, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev.
The agricultural goods are to be shipped to Croatia via the Danube River and will be subsequently transported by rail to the Adriatic Coast, it said. The amount of grain that could be exported this way was not disclosed.
By using this transport system, Ukraine wants to circumvent a blockade by Russia in the Black Sea.
GNA