Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and the western region of Lviv have come under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials have said, and Polish forces have also been placed on heightened readiness.
Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with Sunday’s early morning strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut.
A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people has also become a new flashpoint between the two countries, with President Vladimir Putin seeking to tie Kyiv to the attack; Ukraine has denied involvement and Islamic State has claimed responsibility.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Saturday accused Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” on to Kyiv for the concert hall attack.
“What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other thugs are just trying to blame it on someone else,” said Zelenskiy in response to Putin’s assertion that the suspects had been fleeing towards Ukraine.
“They have brought hundreds of thousands of their own terrorists here, on Ukrainian land, to fight against us, and they don’t care about what is happening inside their own country,” Zelenskiy added.
“That low-life Putin, instead of dealing with his Russian citizens, addressing them, was silent for a full 24 hours, thinking about how to tie this to Ukraine,” he said. “It’s all absolutely predictable.”
Officials in Ukraine said Russia had launched its third pre-dawn attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv.
“Explosions in the capital,” Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, posted on Telegram on Sunday. “Air defence is working. Do not leave shelters.”
The Lviv region’s governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Stryi district, south of the city of Lviv, near the Polish border, had also been attacked.
Ukraine was earlier placed under a nationwide air alert that warned of cruise missiles being launched from Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers. The alert was lifted about two hours later.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, said the missiles were fired at the capital “in groups”.
Preliminary reports suggested there were no casualties or damage, he said, and the city’s air defences had hit “about a dozen” missiles.
“The enemy continues massive missile terror against Ukraine,” Popko said on Telegram. “It does not give up its goal of destroying Kyiv at any cost.”
In Lviv, the mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said about 20 missiles and seven Iranian-made Shahed drones were fired at the region. “They targeted critical infrastructure facilities.”
The Polish Armed Forces Operational Command (RSZ) said its forces were on a heightened state of readiness because of the “intensive long-range aviation activity of the Russian Federation tonight” and the missile attacks in Ukraine.
“Polish and allied aircraft have been activated, which may result in increased noise levels, especially in the south-eastern part of the country,” it said.
It later said Russia had violated Poland’s airspace with a cruise missile which “entered Polish space near the town of Oserdow (Lublin Voivodeship) and stayed there for 39 seconds”.
