Kiev, June 2, (dpa/GNA) – More than 20 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in another major Russian missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital Kiev and other parts of the country, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.
Powerful explosions woke people from their sleep in Kiev during the night. At least six people were killed and 66 others injured in the city of 3 million, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. He said three children are among the injured.
Several buildings were damaged and caught fire, Klitschko said. Many residents sought shelter in metro stations and bunkers, while parts of the city experienced temporary power outages and disruptions to water supplies. Black plumes of smoke could be seen rising over central Kiev at daybreak.
In Kiev’s Podilskyi district, a multi-storey residential building collapsed after being hit, Klitschko wrote on Telegram. Authorities feared people could be trapped under the rubble.
Elsewhere in the capital, an attack damaged the upper floors of a 15-storey apartment building. Several fires were reported across the city.Dnipro hit hardIn the city of Dnipro, at least 16 people were killed, including four children, and 42 others injured in the overnight attack, according to authorities.
The bodies of a woman and an 8-year-old boy were pulled from the rubble, Olexander Hanzha, the military governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, wrote on Telegram. The death toll could still rise as rescue workers continue to search the rubble of collapsed buildings for the dead and survivors.Damage in Kharkiv and ZaporizhzhyaIn the war-torn city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border, at least 10 people were injured, the city’s mayor said.
The state-owned gas company Naftogaz said a “key facility” in the region had been attacked by drones and then missiles. The company said there had been no casualties, but did not provide further details of the damage.
A locomotive was also attacked by a drone in Kharkiv, with the railway company reporting that a railway worker had been injured. Russia also attacked targets in the city of Zaporizhzhya.
Several residential buildings were damaged, but the military governor, Ivan Fedorov, gave no details of possible casualties. Many regions faced power cuts as a result of the Russian attacks. To avoid overloading the grid, the utility company Ukrenergo urged the public to use high-power appliances only between 11 am and 3 pm (0800-1200 GMT), when a large proportion of the electricity comes from solar power.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Moscow had used ballistic and cruise missiles in the attacks, including the Zircon hypersonic weapon.
In neighbouring Poland, the military said on social media platform X that air defences had been placed on alert and military aircraft had been scrambled in response to the Russian attacks in Ukraine.
Poland regularly raises its readiness level during major Russian strikes on Ukraine, sometimes also scrambling fighter jets from NATO partners. Moscow says attacks were against military targetsThe Russian Defence Ministry justified the attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes. On the previous evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of committing “crimes against children and young people” at a National Security Council meeting, referring to a drone attack on a dormitory in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia.
In the attack, 21 young people were killed. Putin claimed Kiev had “given the conflict a new quality,” although Russian attacks in Ukraine have repeatedly caused significantly higher civilian casualties. This time too, the Russian Defence Ministry said the attacks used “high-precision weapons” and had targeted only military sites in the neighbouring country.
The strikes with hypersonic weapons, ballistic missiles and drones were directed against “arms industry enterprises in Kiev, Zaporizhzhya, Kharkiv and Dnipro, in the Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions and against fuel and transport infrastructure objects used in the interests of the Ukrainian armed forces,” a statement from the ministry said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made similar comments, saying “systematic strikes are being carried out against military infrastructure.” If Ukraine wanted to end the war, Peskov said President Volodymyr Zelensky must “order his armed forces to leave the territory of the Russian regions.”
Russia has annexed the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, where it does not have full control, and lays claim to the Donbass.
GNA