Russian missiles hit Kyiv, as Putin issues warning to the West
By Valerie Hopkins and Cora Engelbrecht
KYIV – Russian airstrikes hit Ukraine’s capital early Sunday (5), injuring at least one person, officials said, and piercing a sense of relative security that had settled over the city as the country’s forces slow Russia’s grinding onslaught in the east.
At least five missiles hit the capital, Kyiv, about 5:00 a.m. near a railway station and other targets, the first shelling reported in the city in more than a month. The strikes, which Russia said destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles supplied by Eastern European allies, came as President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would hit targets it had so far avoided if Western nations began delivering longer-range missiles to Ukraine.
The focus of fighting Sunday remained in the eastern Donbas region, where powerful explosions were also heard in the Ukrainian-held city of Kramatorsk, with at least one person reported killed.
Street fights raged in the contested city of Sievierodonetsk, the last major pocket of Ukrainian control in the Luhansk area, which forms part of Donbas. The governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had wrested back part of the city, though the eastern half remained under Russian control.
In its latest intelligence update, the British Defence Ministry said that Ukrainian counterattacks were “likely blunting the operational momentum” of Russian forces in Sievierodonetsk, which the ministry said included separatist fighters who were “poorly equipped and trained” and lacked the heavy equipment of regular units.
Seizing Sievierodonetsk would give Russia total control of Luhansk and perhaps pave the way for a renewed offensive to capture all of the industrial Donbas region, a major objective for Putin after his forces failed to take Kyiv and other parts of northern Ukraine in the early weeks of the war, which began in February.
In other developments:
— President Emmanuel Macron of France’s assertion that Ukraine and its allies should refrain from humiliating Moscow to improve the possibility of a negotiated settlement touched off a fiery response from Kyiv. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that such statements “can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.”
— Bridget A. Brink, the new American ambassador to Kyiv, joined Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, in mourning 261 children killed in the war. Calling their deaths “barbaric and unconscionable,” Brink added that the United States would “continue to support Ukraine so it can defend itself and its people.”
— US warship Kearsarge arrived in Stockholm weeks after Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO. The visit was a reminder both of the protection that NATO membership would bring and of the Nordic states’ obligations not to remain neutral should a direct conflict arise with Russia.
— Ukraine’s national soccer team will play Wales on Sunday, with the winner to advance to the World Cup.
-New York Times