Russia has launched missile attacks on the area around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for the first time in weeks, in a development described by the region’s authorities as “revenge”.
Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine’s General Staff, said Russian forces had attacked the Kyiv area with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in Liutizh village on the outskirts of the capital. One building was destroyed and another two were damaged in the attack.
Mr Hromov added that one of the missiles had been shot down by Ukrainian forces in Bucha.
Kyiv’s regional governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, said 15 people, including five civilians, had been injured in the strikes. Mr Kuleba said that the attacks on Thursday were related to the country’s Day of Statehood, a commemorative event established last year by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Day of Statehood is meant to be a celebration of Ukraine’s independence.
“Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organise precisely because of their statehood,” Mr Kuleba was quoted as saying on Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans, and will continue to defend itself.”
It has also been reported that Russian forces in Belarus fired missiles at the village of Honcharivska, according to Chernihiv’s regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus. The Chernihiv region had also not been targeted in weeks.
The strikes come after Ukraine’s defence ministry said earlier on Thursday that Russian troops in Kherson had been “virtually cut off” from other occupied territory and left vulnerable, after Kyiv’s forces scaled up their counteroffensive in the region.
“We fight every day so that everyone on the planet can finally understand: we are not colony or enclave or protectorate; not a province, an eyalet, or a crown land; not a part of foreign empires, not a part of a country, not a federal republic, not an autonomy, not a province; but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state,” Mr Zelensky said in his Day of Statehood address.
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