Russian strikes on kyiv: at least two dead and several injured

At least two people were killed Thursday in a series of Russian strikes on kyiv, where AFP journalists heard dozens of violent explosions in full missile alert. At least twenty explosions took place, according to these journalists, preceded by an alert launched by the Ukrainian air force, which warned that Russian ballistic missiles were heading towards the city. “The capital is under attack by ballistic missiles. Stay in the shelters!” kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

This new attack came at the same time as, in the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with members of the American Congress to ask them to strengthen sanctions against Moscow. “Once again, the main targets of their attack were kyiv and civilian infrastructure, apartment buildings, a maternity ward, energy facilities and logistics infrastructure. We already know that two people were killed,” Volodymyr Zelensky lamented on Telegram, also reporting several injured and people trapped under the rubble of affected buildings. The authorities in Odessa (south) also spoke of Russian strikes against this large port city on the Black Sea.

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Russia continues “its ballistic terror”

On Wednesday, a series of Russian bombings had already killed at least seven people in Ukraine, including two in kyiv. The Ukrainian capital, which has around 3 million inhabitants, has been the target of particularly intense attacks for several days, in a context of a clear intensification of long-range strikes on both sides of the front. “Each attack of this type takes place because the pressure exerted on the aggressor is still not complete, and Russia believes that it can continue its ballistic terror,” continued Volodymyr Zelensky, calling for the tightening of sanctions against Russia and the sending of missile interceptors to Ukraine.

“We are not going to pause in our special military operation,” the expression used by Moscow to describe the conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Wednesday at the UN Security Council. “Europe wants to get a break, to use it to supply weapons” to Ukraine, he said.

“Patient zero”

Ukraine has itself intensified its strikes in Russia, repeatedly targeting refineries and oil depots in recent months as well as the warehouses of e-commerce giants Wildberries and Ozon. The day before, Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “ready” for a moratorium on strikes against energy sites if Moscow did the same, while his American counterpart Donald Trump has criticized him in recent weeks for worsening the global shortage of diesel by targeting Russian refineries. More than four and a half years after the start of the invasion of his country, Volodymyr Zelensky denounced on Wednesday at the UN the murderous “madness” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging his allies to maintain sanctions against Moscow.

“He is patient zero, the one from whom this idea of ​​war continues to spread,” he said. “Is there anyone left who thinks he is reasonable and moderate?” Faced with this spiral, “our target is Russia's capacity to finance this war, to prolong it, to make it more brutal and more destructive,” he stressed. Russian attacks target warehouses, ships, factories and gas stations and have largely shut down Ukraine's metallurgical sector and its agricultural exports, inflicting significant economic losses at a time when kyiv faces a budget deficit described as "astronomical" by Volodymyr Zelensky.