Russia launches new round of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities

Moscow has targeted several Ukrainian cities for the first time in almost two weeks with renewed rocket attacks on Saturday.

At least nine people were killed and 64 others injured in the southeastern city of Dnipro when a Russian missile attack destroyed part of an apartment building, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.

Infrastructure facilities in the western Lviv region and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, in the Odessa region on the Black Sea and in northeastern Kharkiv were also affected. The capital Kyiv was also attacked.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised on Saturday to supply Ukraine with tanks and artillery systems. Sunak has pledged to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, the British leader’s Downing Street office said in a statement.

It was not said when the tanks would be delivered or how many. British media have reported, without citing a source, that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be sent to Eastern Europe immediately, with eight more to follow shortly thereafter.

Zelenskyy tweeted his thanks to Sunak on Saturday “for the decisions that not only strengthen us on the battlefield but also send the right signal to other partners”.

Ukraine has tried for months to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the US Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks, but Western leaders have tread cautiously.

The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian Armed Forces. Poland has also expressed its willingness to provide a company of Leopard tanks, but President Andrzej Duda, during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, stressed that the move would only be possible as an element of a larger international coalition of tank aid to Kyiv.

Earlier this month, France said it would send AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicles, known in French as “light tanks,” to Ukraine. The US and Germany announced the same week that they would do so Send Bradley fighting vehicles respectively, for the first time, armored personnel carriers Marder.

Sunak’s announcement came as Russian forces fired rockets at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine in the first major barrage in days on Saturday.

In Dnipro, rescuers used a crane to try to evacuate people trapped on the upper floors of the apartment building, some of whom signaled with their mobile phone flashlights, Tymoshenko said on Telegram. He also said that there were likely people under the rubble.

In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said two Russian missiles hit an infrastructure object again on Saturday afternoon after a similar attack in the morning. In the city of Kharkiv, the metro halted operations amid the attacks, according to its Telegram channel.

According to Governor Maksym Kozytskyi, another infrastructure facility was hit in the western Lviv region.

Air defense systems were also activated in other regions of Ukraine, and as another round of air raid sirens rang out across the country in the afternoon, regional officials urged local residents to seek shelter.

Vitaly Kim, governor of southern Mykolayiv region, hinted in a Telegram post that some missiles were intercepted over his province.

Russia fired a total of 33 cruise missiles on Saturday, 21 of which were shot down, Military Commander-in-Chief Valeri Saluzhny said.

Earlier in the day, explosions also rocked the capital, Kyiv. The explosions occurred before airborne sirens sounded, which is unusual. It’s likely the explosions preceded the warning sirens because the attack came from ballistic missiles, which are faster than cruise missiles or drones.

According to Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat, Russia has attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles from the north.

“The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down,” he told local media. The missile threat warning came too late due to a lack of radar data and information from other sources.

An infrastructure target was hit in the morning missile attack, Ukrainian officials said.

Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper River, said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Klitschko also said that fragments of a rocket fell on a non-residential area in Holosiivskyi district on the right bank and a fire briefly broke out in a building there. No casualties have been reported so far.

This was the first attack on the Ukrainian capital since January 1.

Two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Saturday morning. The attacks with S-300 missiles were aimed at “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (remote) region,” Governor Syniehubov said. No casualties were reported, but emergency power outages are possible in the city and other settlements in the region, the official said.

In the eastern Ukraine city of Avdiivka, where fighting is most intense, three people were killed in Russian artillery strikes on Saturday, Mayor Vitalii Barabash said. One person died in a rocket attack in Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Reznichenko said.

The attacks follow conflicting reports about the fate of the hard-fought salt mining town of Soledar in the embattled east of Ukraine. Russia claims its forces have taken the city, a development that would mean a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating battlefield setbacks.

Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Malyar said on Saturday that “fierce fighting around Soledar continues”.

Moscow has presented the battle for the city and nearby town of Bakhmut as key to conquering the eastern Donbass region, which includes the partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and as a way to crush the best Ukrainian forces and prevent them from counterattacking start elsewhere.

But that goes both ways, as Ukraine says its fierce defense of eastern strongholds helped tie down Russian forces. Western officials and analysts say the importance of the two cities is more symbolic than strategic.