Kiev, July 6, (dpa/GNA) – Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight, killing at least 21 people and injuring many more, ahead of a key NATO summit in Ankara.
In Kiev alone, at least 15 people were killed, the city’s military administration said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a further 60 had been injured in the capital. The numbers are likely to increase, with many residential buildings damaged and some having partially collapsed.
Shortly after midnight, air raid sirens and loud explosions were heard in Kiev, while warning sirens sounded across nearly all regions of the country, according to authorities and media reports.
Search and rescue operations were under way, Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko said. “There may be people under the rubble,” he said in a video filmed in front of a partially collapsed six-storey residential block, whose upper floors showed particularly severe destruction. Klitschko said similarly heavy strikes had hit other districts of the city.
Around 30 residential buildings overall had sustained damage. Casualties were also reported in areas surrounding Kiev, where six people were killed and 21 injured, according to official figures.
A large fire broke out in the town of Vyshneve on the western outskirts of Kiev. Security forces evacuated hundreds of people, due to secondary explosions, pointing to a strike on an ammunition depot.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the “Vizar” plant in Vyshneve was targeted – a facility specializing in the maintenance of air defence systems and the production of associated missiles. Damage to railway infrastructure in the Kiev region caused by the attack forced Ukrainian Railways to reroute trains and deploy replacement bus services.
Around 60 trains were delayed, in some cases by several hours. The Russian military had carried out a similar attack just four days earlier, killing and injuring dozens. On that occasion, Moscow deployed around 500 drones and more than 70 cruise missiles and rockets, compared to 351 drones as well as 68 rockets and cruise missiles in the latest attack, according to Zelensky.
“Our fighters achieved good results today in shooting down drones and cruise missiles, but unfortunately not against Russian ballistic missiles,” Zelensky said, attributing this to a shortage of air defence missiles in Ukraine. He had warned of the imminent attack in a video message the previous evening, citing intelligence information. “This is typical of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Right after America’s Independence Day and before the NATO Summit in Ankara. Russia wants to bring more evil and kill people,” Zelensky posted on Facebook on Sunday.
Following the attack, Zelensky called on NATO leaders to agree measures to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences at their summit in Ankara this week. As long as Patriot missiles were gathering dust in allied stockpiles, Moscow would only be encouraged to continue waging war against civilians, he wrote.
Patriot systems are Ukraine’s only effective means of countering Russian missiles. Zelensky had complained months ago that his country had barely any ammunition left for them. The US war against Iran has further depleted global stocks of the interceptor missiles.
Most recently, Zelensky raised the possibility of domestic Patriot production, pointing out that European production in Ukraine was also conceivable. The NATO summit will also address further military aid packages worth billions of dollars for Ukraine.
Ukraine, for its part, launched more than 500 drones in an attack on Russia, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday, adding that 519 unmanned aerial vehicles had been shot down. Ukrainian drones had even struck the Siberian industrial city of Omsk, more than 2,400 kilometres from Ukrainian-controlled territory, the governor of the Omsk region said. “Some drones managed to reach the northern industrial area of Omsk,” Vitali Khozenko wrote on Telegram, saying damage had occurred.
Videos circulating on Ukrainian Telegram channels, showed drones approaching the oil refinery located north of Omsk. Eyewitnesses also reported a fire at the facility. The Omsk refinery is the largest in Russia, with a processing capacity of more than 20 million metric tons per year.
The authorities closed Omsk airport, due to the air raid alert. Earlier, the independent online portal Astra reported that a refinery in the major city of Yaroslavl, north of Moscow, had once again been attacked.
Images circulating on social media showed clouds of smoke over the facility, it said. There was no official information on possible damage to the oil processing plant. According to Yaroslavl Governor Mikhail Yevrayev, air defences had shot down more than 70 drones. “Two people suffered shrapnel injuries,” he wrote on Telegram, saying they were being treated in hospital. He warned of possible further attacks.
Ukraine attacked around 20 Russian regions and regions under Russian control, once again including Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, the Defence Ministry in Moscow reported. On the Crimean Peninsula, drone attacks killed a woman and injured two other people, wrote Moscow-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov.
In the port city of Sevastopol, energy infrastructure was hit, Moscow-installed Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said. He later wrote that the power supply for most households had been restored after switching to backup capacity.
GNA