Russian rockets hit Kyiv during UN chief’s visit

The West says besieged city of Mariupol main target, Ukraine president says the blasts ‘ prove that we must not drop our vigilance’, the war is not over

Two Russian missiles struck Kyiv during a visit by the head of the United Nations, Ukrainian officials said, but the West believes the battles for the besieged port of Mariupol and other areas in the east and south may determine the war’s outcome.

Russia withdrew its forces from outside Kyiv last month after failing to take the capital and launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. But Thursday’s blasts in Kyiv, heard soon after U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, highlighted concerns the capital remains vulnerable. 

Zelensky said the blasts “prove that we must not drop our vigilance. We must not think that the war is over.” The rockets shook the central Shevchenko district and one struck the lower floors of a 25-storey residential building, wounding at least 10 people, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia says struck Kyiv rocket plant

Russia said on Friday that its forces had destroyed the production facilities of a space-rocket plant in Kyiv. “The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation in Ukraine,” the defence ministry said. “High-precision long-range air-based weapons destroyed the production facilities of the Artem rocket and space industry enterprise in the city of Kyiv.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with (right) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres  during their meeting in Kyiv, on Thursday. Pic/AFP

In his visit to Ukraine’s Borodyanka, Guterres described the ongoing war “an absurdity.” He said, “I imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black.”

“I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed. So, the war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil. Guterres was quoted by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,  Ukraine.

1,150
No. of civilians’ bodies, 70% with bullet wounds, found in Kyiv region

Russian submarine strikes Ukraine  

Russia used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibr cruise missiles, the first time Moscow has announced the use of its submarine fleet to hit its former Soviet neighbour. The Russian defence ministry released a video showing a volley of Kalibr missiles emerging from the sea and soaring off into the horizon - to what the ministry said were Ukrainian military targets. This is the first time Russia’s military has reported using submarine strikes against Ukrainian targets, Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

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