By Olena Harmash and Yurii Kovalenko
KYIV, Aug 1 (Reuters) – Russia pounded Kyiv in a heavy ballistic missile attack early on Saturday, killing nine people, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Ukraine had run out of interceptor missiles for its U.S. Patriot air defence systems.
Zelenskiy said that Russia launched 35 missiles at Ukraine, including 27 ballistic missiles, and also 185 drones. Only one ballistic missile was intercepted, “simply because there are no interceptors for the Patriot system”, he said.
More than a dozen explosions reverberated through the city during several waves of attacks, according to Reuters witnesses.
“Every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people. And every night without them results in more casualties,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram app.
With the war in its fifth year, fighting is raging along about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) of front line. But Russian advances have slowed by more than half this year, and Ukraine has been launching strikes inside Russia hitting its oil facilities, logistics sites and weapons production.
At the same time, Russia intensified its attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine is chronically short of air defences capable of downing ballistic missiles, which travel at several times the speed of sound.
Moscow and Kyiv both deny targeting civilians in the war launched by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
SECOND MAJOR ATTACK ON KYIV THIS WEEK
Saturday’s is the second major attack on Kyiv this week after strikes on Thursday killed nine people, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyi Rih, and a suspected Russian cruise missile landed in Poland.
Damage was recorded in seven districts across Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people, the Prosecutor’s General Office said after Saturday’s attacks.
Zelenskiy said that fires broke out across Kyiv and 18 residential buildings, a school, the Lithuanian Embassy, and infrastructure facilities were damaged.
The Lithuanian foreign ministry said windows at its embassy had broken, solar collectors were damaged, and the yard was scattered with debris.
Ukrainian prosecutors said seven people were killed in the Darnytskyi district on the left bank of the Dnipro river and two more people died in the Solomyanskyi district on the right bank of the city.
Dozens of people were injured, including four children who suffered multiple shrapnel wounds and lacerations.
“I looked at my phone, it was 1:30 (22:30 GMT) and sirens (blared), I was lying dressed in my bed, I got up immediately. And at once explosions started – boom, boom,” said Nadiia Komarova, a 68-year-old concierge at an apartment building in Kyiv.
“Our ceilings have started to crumble. My window here is smashed, and everything has fallen inside,” she told Reuters.
Reuters television footage showed police and rescuers working on the site. Two rescuers put a body in a black sack in a car. Firefighters were extinguishing fires and charred cars stood near an apartment building.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha issued a fresh plea for urgent air defence supplies. “It is the battle for the skies that will define the trajectory of this war. The stronger the air shield over Ukraine, the closer peace becomes.”
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Olena Harmash; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Tom Hogue, Kirsten Donovan)
Comments