Russia has launched dozens of missiles and drones towards Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, injuring at least five people amid growing safety concerns at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
Ukraine’s top military command said it had destroyed all 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched overnight, adding that Russia had also launched dozens of missiles.
“Unfortunately, dead and injured civilians, high-rise buildings, private homes and other civilian infrastructure have been damaged,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily update.
The latest airstrike comes as Moscow prepares to celebrate Victory Day, a major Russian holiday that marks the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II and usually includes a military parade in Red Square.
Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least five people were injured in the airstrikes on the capital, while Russian missiles set a warehouse full of food in Odessa on fire. Explosions were reported in several other Ukrainian regions.
Russia also intensified its shelling of ruined Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s top general in charge of the city’s defense, in hopes of making a profit ahead of the May 9 holiday. Once known as a salt mining town, Bakhmut is seen by the Russians as a key target to secure the eastern advance.
Witnesses told Reuters news agency they heard numerous explosions in Kiev as local officials said air defense systems repelled the attacks.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram messaging channel that three people were injured in explosions in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi neighborhood and two others were injured when debris from a drone fell on the Sviatoshyn neighborhood, both west of the capital’s center.
Kyiv’s military administration said that in the city’s central Shevchenkivskyi district, drone debris appeared to have hit a two-story building, causing damage and also falling on a runway of Zhuliany Airport, one of two passenger airports. of the Ukrainian capital.
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odessa military administration, posted photos on his Telegram channel of a large building engulfed in flames in what he said was a Russian attack on a warehouse, among other things.
After hours of alarms being raised over about two-thirds of Ukraine, there were also media reports of sounds of explosions in the southern region of Kherson and in the Zaporizhia region of the southeast, where the Zaporizhia nuclear complex is located.
The Moscow-installed governor of the region has ordered the evacuation of civilians, including from Enerhodar, the city where most of the nuclear power plant workers live.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has spent months trying to persuade Russian and Ukrainian officials to establish a protection zone around the nuclear power plant to reduce the danger of a disaster. Nuclear power plants require constant power to run cooling systems and prevent a meltdown, and the Zaporizhzhia plant has been shut down six times since fighting began.
The region’s Russian-installed governor, Yegeny Balitsky, said on Sunday that more than 1,500 people had been evacuated from two unnamed towns in the area. On Friday, he ordered civilians to leave 18 Russian-occupied communities, including Enerhodar. The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that the evacuation of Enerhodar was underway.
Moscow troops seized the plant shortly after last year’s invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian workers continued to run the plant during the occupation, sometimes under extreme duress.
In the past two weeks, attacks on Russian-held targets have intensified, particularly in Crimea, which Moscow invaded and annexed in 2014.
Ukraine, without confirming any role in those attacks, says destroying enemy infrastructure is a preparation for its long-awaited ground attack.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to defend Russia against alleged “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine.
Kiev and its allies say the invasion was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation.
Thousands have been killed and millions forced to flee as a result of the fighting.