The governor of the region said that a Russian missile attack targeted, on Saturday, a residential building in the city of Dnipro, in central-eastern Ukraine, killing five people and wounding 27 others, including six children.
27 people were injured, including six children. “They are all in hospital,” Dnipropetrovsk governor Valentin Reznichenko said.
The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Telegram that there may have been people under the rubble. The rescue operation was underway.
Footage posted online showed a nine-storey building, part of which had collapsed. The strike came amid reports that Russian forces targeted several Ukrainian towns for the first time in nearly two weeks.
A series of explosions rocked the city of Kyiv on Saturday morning, and minutes later sirens began to sound across the city and across much of Ukraine.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Telegram that critical infrastructure had been targeted in Kyiv.
The Kyiv city military administration said an unidentified infrastructure object was hit in the city and that emergency services were working at the site of the strike.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were heard in the Dnipro region of the city. Klitschko also said that shrapnel from a missile fell on a non-residential area in the Holoseevsky district and a building fire broke out. No injuries were reported so far in the capital region.
The first attack on Kyiv since January 1
It was not immediately clear if multiple facilities in Kyiv were targeted, or just those allegedly targeted. The Ukrainian capital has not been hit by a missile attack since New Year’s Eve, January 1.
Tymoshenko said that in the remote Kyiv region, an apartment building in the village of Kobelev was hit and windows of nearby houses were smashed.
18 private homes were destroyed in the region, according to the district governor Oleksiy Kuleba. “There are damaged roofs and windows,” Koleba said in a post on Telegram, but there were no injuries. He added that a fire in “vital infrastructure” in the area had been brought under control.
British supply tanks
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said that as Russia entered its 11th month, it confirmed on Saturday the UK’s plans to send Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, along with additional artillery support.
“The two leaders agreed on the need to seize this moment by accelerating global military and diplomatic support for Ukraine,” a spokesman for Sunak said in a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A statement from Sunak’s Downing Street office did not say when the tanks would be delivered or how many.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, two Russian missiles hit an industrial zone on Saturday afternoon, following a similar attack in the morning, Governor Oleh Sinyhopov reported. Subway operations were halted amid the attacks, according to the city’s Telegram channel.
The strikes targeted “energy and industrial objects in Kharkiv and [outlying] “There were no reports of casualties, but a power outage in the city and other settlements in the region was possible,” Sinopov said.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Sinyhopov said two Russian missiles again hit an infrastructure object at noon on Saturday, following a similar attack in the morning. In the city of Kharkiv, the metro stopped operations amid the attacks, according to the Telegram channel. .
Governor Maxim Kozitsky said other infrastructure was bombed in the western district of Lviv.
Vitaly Kem, governor of the Mykolaiv region, said Russian missiles had been detected flying over southern Ukraine and air defenses were operational.
The disputed state of the city of salt
The attacks come amid conflicting reports about the fate of the disputed salt-mining town of Soledar in embattled eastern Ukraine. Russia says its forces have captured the city, a development that would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating battlefield setbacks.
The Ukrainian authorities insist that Zelensky continue to fight for solidarity.
Moscow has claimed the hotly contested salt-mining town of Solidar in Ukraine, and the Russian Defense Ministry has made clear that mercenaries from the Wagner Group did most of the fighting during the conflict.
Moscow has described the battle for its neighboring town of Bakhmut as the key to capturing the eastern Donbass region, made up of the partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and as a means of crushing and impeding the best Ukrainian forces. Launch counterattacks elsewhere.
But it goes both ways, with Ukraine saying its relentless defense of its eastern strongholds has helped constrain Russian forces. Western officials and analysts say the importance of the two cities is more symbolic than strategic.
