Russia launched a wave of air attacks on Ukraine early on Sunday, with air defence systems repelling all missiles and drones on their approach to Kyiv, the city’s military officials said.
“According to preliminary information, not a single air target reached the capital,” Serhiy Popko, the head of the military administration, posted online early on Sunday. “Air defence destroyed everything that was heading towards the city already at their distant approaches.”
Reuters witnesses reported hearing several blasts in the Kyiv region, but not in the city, from what sounded like air defence systems hitting targets.
All of Ukraine was under air raid alerts for nearly three hours.
There were unverified Ukrainian social media reports of blasts heard in Kryvyi Rih in southern Ukraine, near the central city of Kropyvnitskyi, and in the north-eastern region of Sumy. There was no immediate official information about the reports.
On Saturday, an explosion near the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro hit a two-storey dwelling, injuring 20 people including five children, and rescuers pulled residents out from under the rubble, the regional governor said.
Serhiy Lysak posted online that three of the children were in serious condition. A total of 17 people were being treated in hospital.
Media reports said emergency teams had pulled four people from under rubble in the town known as the Pidhorodnenska community. Lysak said another child was likely still trapped.
Reports on social media said a Russian missile caused the explosion and that an emergency services building was also hit.
There was no confirmation by Ukrainian military officials of a missile strike.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted that the explosion occurred between two dwellings.
“Unfortunately, there are people under the rubble,” Zelenskiy wrote. “Once again, Russia proves it is a terrorist state.”
Pictures posted on social media showed rescue teams working at a shattered, smouldering building amid piles of twisted building materials.
Shelling and strikes also hit Russia’s Belgorod region, killing two people on Saturday as hundreds of children were evacuated away from the border, said the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
“The children of Shebekino are very worried about their home town,” Gladkov posted online after escorting about 600 of them from the region’s Shebekino and Graivoron districts to Yaroslavl and Kaluga. “I started leaving, they stopped me and with anxiety started asking questions.”
Shebekino, a town of about 40,000 on the border, and other places in the southern Russian region have been attacked repeatedly the past week, Gladkov has said, forcing the relocation of at least 2,500 people so far.
The reality of the war, which Moscow launched in Ukraine in February 2022 has been increasingly brought to Russia, with intensified shelling on border regions but also airstrikes deep inside the country, including last week on Moscow.
In late May, Russia’s military said it had repelled one of the most serious cross-border attacks by a Ukrainian “sabotage group” that had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district. Ukraine has denied attacking Moscow and said Russian volunteer fighters, not the Ukrainian military, conducted the incursions into Belgorod.
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