Kyiv under attack as Russian forces make minor gains in eastern Ukraine
After weeks of relative calm, the Ukrainian capital is once again under attack. Two loud explosions rocked Kyiv last night as Russian missiles hit the central Shevchenkivskyi district.
This morning, the body of Vira Hyrych, a 55-year-old Ukrainian journalist working for Radio Liberty, was discovered after she was killed when a rocket struck her home. Ukrainian authorities say at least three others have been hospitalised from the blast.
The Russian defence ministry insists this was a targeted military attack, using “high precision” missiles to destroy a plant which manufactures space-rockets in the capital.
The timing of Vladimir Putin’s attack has delivered a brazen message to the international community. The rockets landed barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky held a joint press conference with UN Secretary General Antoni Guterres, who was visiting him in the capital. One rocket landed close to the UN chief’s hotel.
During his perilous trip to Kyiv, Guterres visited the mass graves and site of massacres on the city’s outskirts, and discussed evacuating civilians from Mariupol.
According to Zelensky, an operation is set to take place today to get civilians out of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant – the final part of the city which has not fallen to Moscow. The last Ukrainian defenders are holed up in a network of bunkers and tunnels underneath the steelworks. It’s thought there are about 600 seriously wounded fighters inside, some of whom require urgent surgery such as amputations, as well as hundreds of civilians, including children.
Last week, Putin abandoned plans to storm the plant, instead ordering his troops to seal it off. Yet since then, Russian air strikes have continued unabated. Earlier in the week, Putin agreed “in principle” to allow the UN and Red Cross to evacuate civilians from Azovstal. But trust is at rock bottom given the Russian breaches of prior attempts to create humanitarian corridors in the Southern port city.
Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces are continuing to make minor gains around the city of Izyum. In the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, fighting has been particularly heavy around Lysychansk and Severodonetsk. But due to strong Ukrainian resistance, territorial gains in the Donbas region have been limited so far – and “achieved at significant cost to Russian forces,” UK Ministry Of Defence has said.
According to the Institute for Study of War: “The capability of Russian forces to encircle large groups of Ukrainian forces remains in doubt.” With all this in mind, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, warned yesterday that the war in Ukraine could last for years.