Kyiv was hit by four Russian missile strikes early on Sunday morning for the first time in three weeks, during which life had been slowly returning to the Ukrainian capital in the relative calm.
Columns of smoke rose over the central Shevchenkivskyi district, home to a cluster of universities, restaurants and art galleries, at 6.22am as G7 leaders prepared for three days of meetings in Germany with Russia’s war in Ukraine at the top of the agenda. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said two residential buildings had been hit in what he called an attempt to “intimidate Ukrainians” before the G7 meeting and a Nato summit in Madrid beginning on Tuesday.
Around 11am, there were at least several unconfirmed reports of two more explosions in Kyiv, but according to local officials the blasts heard were the sound of air defence destroying other incoming strikes.
One man was killed and six people, including a woman from Russia, were taken to hospital, while a seven-year-old girl was rescued from rubble, Klitschko said. “She is alive,” he said on Telegram, adding that rescue workers were trying to “save her mother”. He said more residents could be trapped under rubble.
“We heard four explosions, they were very loud,” said Marina, 33, a resident of an apartment building close to the missile strike. “An entire building was shaking. Luckily, our apartment is fine. Originally we are from Chernihiv, we’ve lived through all this and now again … I don’t know if I want to move out, I need to calm down and then decide.”
The strikes came as Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to cut off Lysychansk, having reduced its twin city Sievierodonetsk to rubble. If Lysychansk falls, the entire region of Luhansk, which along with Donetsk make up the eastern Donbas region, could fall under Russian control, marking another strategic breakthrough for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, since the beginning of the invasion.
Russia’s Interfax news agency and pro-Russian separatist fighters said Russian troops had entered Lysychansk on Saturday after Ukrainian forces were ordered to withdraw from Sievierodonetsk. The claim could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian side.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk province, said on Facebook that Russian and separatist fighters were trying to blockade Lysychansk from the south and that due to the bombardments the city “is almost unrecognizable”.
The area of Kyiv hit on Sunday was previously the target on 28 April in a menacing display of defiance while the UN secretary general was visiting the city and a few hours after Joe Biden had announced a doubling of US military and economic aid to Ukraine.
Vira Hyrych, a Ukrainian journalist from Radio Liberty who also worked for Voice of America, was killed in her apartment by the attack.
The Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko wrote on Telegram that “according to prelim data 14 missiles were launched against Kyiv region and Kyiv” in Sunday’s attacks. The culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said on Telegram that a kindergarten was hit.
The Russian defence ministry said that the strike on Kyiv had hit the Artyom weapons factory in Shevchenkivskyi district, dismissing as “fake” reports that it had struck a residential area of the Ukrainian capital.
“Russian forces attacked civilian targets in Kyiv = fake,” the ministry said in a statement, citing that the damage to a nearby residential building had been caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
“There was damage to the bottom of the building as well as the top, which confirms the version that it was a falling missile,” it said.
According to Ukrainian military officials, Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles were fired from planes over the Caspian Sea.
The capital has not come under Russian bombardment since 5 June, when Russian forces hit the city with cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea, striking a rail repair facility.
Russian missiles also struck near the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy on Sunday, largely untouched by bombardment since the war started in February, killing one person and hitting a bridge that helps connect western regions with eastern battle zones, according to Ukrainian officials.
“Today, the enemy launched missile attacks on the Cherkasy region. There are 2 strikes near the regional centre. One dead and five wounded. Infrastructure damaged,” said regional governor Ihor Taburets on the Telegram app.
Attacks over the weekend also hit the village of Desna in the northern Chernihiv region on Saturday, with 20 rockets “fired from the territory of Belarus and from the air”, Ukraine’s northern military command said.
Belarus is officially not involved in the conflict, but has provided logistic support to Moscow since the beginning of the invasion. “Today’s strike is directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian intelligence service said.
The attack came before a planned meeting between Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and close ally, Alexander Lukashenko, in St Petersburg on Saturday in which the Russian leader said he would deliver missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Belarus in the coming months.
“In the coming months, we will transfer to Belarus Iskander-M tactical missile systems, which can use ballistic or cruise missiles, in their conventional and nuclear versions,” Putin said in a broadcast on Russian television.
Additional reporting by Artem Mazhulin