KYIV, Ukraine
Russia shattered weeks of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital with long-range missiles fired toward Kyiv early Sunday, an apparent Kremlin show-of-force as Western leaders meet in Europe to strengthen their military and economic support of Ukraine.
The strikes also damaged a
nearby kindergarten, where a crater pocked the courtyard. U.S. President Joe
Biden called the attacks “barbarism” after he arrived in Germany for a Group of
Seven summit.
Later Sunday, a local official
reported a second death, telling the Unian news agency that a railroad worker
was killed and several others were injured in the attacks while servicing rail
infrastructure.
Ukrainian air force spokesman
Yuriy Ignat said the first air-launched weapons successfully to target the
capital since June 5 were Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from warplanes over the
Caspian Sea, more than 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away.
Kyiv’s mayor told journalists
he thought the airstrikes were “maybe a symbolic attack” ahead of a
NATO summit in Madrid that starts Tuesday. A former commander of U.S.
forces in Europe said the strikes also were a signal to the leaders
of G-7 nations meeting Sunday in Germany.
“Russia is saying, ‘We can do
this all day long. You guys are powerless to stop us,’” retired Lt. Gen. Ben
Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said. “The
Russians are humiliating the leaders of the West.”
The G-7 leaders were set to
announce the latest in a long series of international economic steps to
pressure and isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine: new bans on imports of
Russian gold. Standing with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the three-day
meeting’s host, Biden said of the missile strikes on Kyiv: “It’s more of their
barbarism.”
Zelenskyy, speaking in his
nightly video address, appealed to the G-7 leaders for more help, saying
stopping Russian aggression “is possible only if we get everything we ask for,
and in the time we need it - weapons, financial support and sanctions against
Russia.”
A Ukrainian parliament member,
Oleksiy Goncharenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that preliminary
information indicated that Russia launched 14 missiles toward the capital
region and Kyiv itself. Zelenskyy said some were intercepted, and he vowed
revenge against “all pilots, dispatchers, technicians and other people who
ensure the launch of missiles in Ukraine.”
“We will find you all. Each of
you will be responsible for these blows,” Zelenskyy vowed. “And if someone
thinks he will evade responsibility by saying that this was an order, you are
wrong. When your missiles hit homes, it’s a war crime. The court is what awaits
you all. And you will not hide anywhere - neither on the shores of the Caspian
Sea, over which your missiles are launched, nor in Belarus ... Nowhere.”
In a phone interview, retired
U.S. general Hodges told The Associated Press that Russia has a limited stock
of precision missiles and “if they are using them, it’s going to be for a
special purpose,”
Russia has denied targeting
civilians during the 4-month-old war, and Hodges said it was hard to know if
the missiles launched Sunday were intended to strike the apartments buildings.
Russian forces tried to seize
control of Kyiv early in the war. After Ukrainian troops repelled them, the
Kremlin largely shifted its focus to southern and eastern Ukraine.
Russian rocket strikes in the city of Cherkasy, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kyiv, killed one person and injured five, regional governor Ihor Taburets said Sunday.
In the east, Russian troops
fought to consolidate their gains by battling to swallow up the last remaining
Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said
Sunday that Russia was conducting intense airstrikes on the city of Lysychansk,
destroying its television tower and seriously damaging a road bridge.
“There’s very much
destruction. Lysychansk is almost unrecognizable,” he wrote on Facebook.
For weeks, Lysychansk and the
nearby city of Sievierodonetsk have been subject to a bloody and destructive
offensive by Russian forces and their separatist allies aimed at capturing all
of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
They have made steady and slow
progress, with Haidai confirming Saturday that Sievierodonetsk, including a
chemical plant where hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians were holed up,
had fallen.
Commenting on the battle for
Sievierodonetsk, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said late
Saturday that Russian and Moscow-backed separatist forces now control not only
the city but the villages surrounding it. He said the Russian military had
thwarted Ukrainian forces’ attempt to turn the Azot chemical plant into a
“stubborn center of resistance.”
Capturing Lysychansk would
give Russian and separatist forces control of every major settlement in
Luhansk. At last report, they controlled about half of Donetsk, the second
province in the Donbas.
On Saturday, Russia launched
dozens of missiles on several areas across the country far from the heart of
the eastern battles. Some of the missiles were fired from Russian long-range
Tu-22 bombers deployed from Belarus for the first time, Ukraine’s air command
said.
Reacting to the shelling from
the Russian bombers, Zelenskyy appealed to the people of Belarus to resist
cooperation with the Russian military. “The Russian leadership wants to draw
you - all Belarusians - into the war, wants to sow hatred between us,” he said
in his video address Sunday. “You can refuse to participate in this war. Your
lives belong only to you, not to someone in the Kremlin.”
Belarus hosts Russian military
units and was used as a staging ground before Russia invaded Ukraine, but its
own troops have not crossed the border. In a meeting Saturday, Russian
President Vladimir Putin told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that
Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system.
On the economic front, U.S.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said banning imports of Russian gold would
represent a significant escalation of sanctions.
“That is the second-most
lucrative export that Russia has after energy.” Blinken told American news
channel CNN. “It’s about $19 billion a year. And most of that is within the G-7
countries. So cutting that off, denying access to about $19 billion of revenues
a year, that’s significant.”
Russia is poised to default on
its foreign debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution,
further alienating the country from the global financial system following
international sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.
The country faces a Sunday
night deadline to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments originally
due May 27. But it could take time to confirm a default.
Russia calls any default
artificial because it has the money to pay its debts but says sanctions have
frozen its foreign currency reserves held abroad. - AP
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