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At least 37 people have been killed following a Russian attack on the Bucha district, close to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, officials said Saturday.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the local regional military administration, said at least 50 residential buildings had been damaged in the attack, which also sparked a large-scale fire that spread to homes and a restaurant.
In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a warehouse had been struck in the village of Myla “followed by a detonation.”
Retired major-general Scott Clancy says Ukraine has been fighting a war of attrition as Western allies provide enough support to keep it in the fight but not enough to secure victory. He says Ukraine urgently needs more air defence systems and long-range capabilities as Russia ramps up missile production.
He did not give details on the site but wrote that criminal proceedings had been opened on charges of official negligence.
“There are regulations in place — ammunition cannot be stored near homes or other residential areas,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian leader wrote that a care home for elderly people and people with disabilities and residential buildings were damaged.
“More than 370 people have already been evacuated, and the evacuation is ongoing,” he said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi also didn’t offer information on the warehouse targeted. He referred to an attack on the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve earlier in the month, which hit an ammunition depot, killing 22, and triggered large detonations and fires that tore through nearby homes.
“Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” Koretskyi said. “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.”
One woman described the stress of repeated attacks on Ukraine’s capital as living in a state of ‘constant fear,’ saying there’s no sleep for people in the area around Kyiv. Russia’s latest wave of strikes killed at least 17 people and damaged warehouses and logistics centres, Ukrainian officials say.
In a statement, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had hit a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also said that it had attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, as well as a logistics centre and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region.
Almost constant air raids in Kyiv have now reached their third day, choking the economy in the Ukrainian capital and severely disrupting civilian life more than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Andrew Chang breaks down why Ukraine’s air defences failed to intercept any of the ballistic missiles Russia fired during its latest attack.
Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters, Adobe Stock and Getty Images
Elsewhere, Russian attacks across Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Saturday killed two people and wounded 27, a local official said.
Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region administration, said attacks had damaged homes and apartment blocks and that one child was among the injured.
Earlier in the week, Prokudin said Russia has intensified attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, which is about 70 per cent under Russian control. He also urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.
Meanwhile, three people have been killed and nine injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region, local authorities said on their Telegram channel.
Three of the injured are in serious condition, authorities said.
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