Ukrainian firefighters examine damaged cars at the site of a missile strike in central Kharkiv on 6 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Sergey Bobok/ AFP)
- Ukrainian officials on Sunday reported that a 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father died when debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on the house.
- A 13-year-old child was among the injured in the attack in the Brovary district, in the Kyiv region just northeast of the capital’s metropolitan area.
- The attack came after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged for the first time that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk.
A 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father died when debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on the house they were living in near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
A 13-year-old child was among the injured in the attack in the Brovary district, in the Kyiv region just northeast of the capital’s metropolitan area, Ukraine’s emergency services said on the Telegram messaging app.
Workers were shown, in a video posted by the emergency services, clearing brick by brick at night through a pile of building debris and lifting the body of a child from underneath it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said the house was hit by drone debris, but the emergency services said it was missile debris.
“russia continues to kill people,” Yermak posted on Telegram, following Ukraine’s wartime practice of not capitalising Russia’s name. “It is necessary to destroy its military infrastructure, because the enemy does not accept other arguments.”
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia. Kyiv and Moscow deny targeting civilians in their attacks in the war, which Russia launched in February 2022 and which has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of Ukrainians.
READ MORE | Putin rages at Ukraine attack in Kursk Region, calling a ‘major provocation’
On Saturday Zelenskiy acknowledged for the first time that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk, as the border region’s authorities rushed to evacuate civilians from areas at risk.
Moscow’s forces are in their sixth day of intense battles against Kyiv’s largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.
In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday, while Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to restore justice after Russia launched a full-scale aggression on its smaller neighbour in February 2022.
“Today, I received several reports from commander-in-chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor’s territory,” he said.
“Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the Ukrainian attack – which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard – as a major provocation.
Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday the attacks had been halted, but Russia has thus far failed to push the Ukrainian forces back over the border.
Russian military bloggers say the situation had stabilised after Russia’s reinforcements, though they said Ukraine was swiftly building up forces.
Early on Sunday, Kursk officials said that 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukraine-launched missile fell onto a nine-storey residential building.
Alexei Smirnov, Kursk’s acting governor, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in areas at risk. On Saturday, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.
Both Kyiv and Moscow deny targeting civilians in their attacks in the war, which has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of Ukrainians, and has no end in sight.
Russian military bloggers say that fighting is taking place as deep as 20 km inside the Kursk region, prompting some of them to question why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily.
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