Russia strikes Kyiv for first time since April

Bloomberg

Several explosions took place in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday with no casualties reported, Kyiv authorities said, while air defense forces shot down another Russian missile in the region. Kyiv was last struck around the end of April.
The situation in the eastern Luhansk region, where Russian troops continue to storm the city of Sievierodonetsk, remains “extremely difficult,” Governor Serhiy Haiday said on Telegram.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia will broaden its attacks if Ukraine receives longer-range missiles, adding that discussions on new weapon supplies are aimed at extending the war.
A two-day visit of Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Serbia is in question as Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Bulgaria are banning his plane from their air space,
Vecernje Novosti reported, without saying where it got
information.
Due to the recent developments, Serbia’s President
Aleksandar Vucic will meet with Russian Ambassador Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko on Monday, according to the Serbian publication.
Lavrov was planning to visit Serbia on June 6-7 to meet the nation’s leader as well as his counterpart, Tass reported,
citing Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. They were expected to discuss in-depth bilateral political and economic relations and exchange their views on the situation in the Balkan region and also talk about other international problems, according to Tass.
There were no tanks at Ukriane’s coach-repair plant hit in Russia’s missile attack, state-run railway company Ukrzaliznytsia’s Chief Executive Office Oleksandr Kamyshev said.
Four Russian missiles hit Darnytsia coach-repair plant that fixed wagons to transport grain and other exports, Kamyshev said. “I officially state that there is no military equipment at the premises of the plant,” he said, inviting journalists for a tour tonight.
“Russia again told a lie. Their real goal is Ukraine’s economy and civilians. They want to stop our ability to export Ukrainian products to the west.”
Putin is using gas in an effort to split Europe as he continues to wage war on Ukraine, Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in an interview with CNews and Europe1.
“We must also free ourselves from gas, because Russian gas today, we must get our autonomy back as quickly as possible as Vladimir Putin doesn’t like the European project,” Breton said.
“For years, he’s done everything to divide Europe,” he added, citing Brexit, Covid vaccines and TV channel Russia Today as examples. “Now he’s using gas precisely to divide us.”
Breton said plans are in place if Putin takes further steps to switch off Russian gas after cutting supplies to Poland, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Finland and Denmark. This includes boosting LNG imports, partly from the US and Qatar, accelerating solar and offshore wind power, and extending the life of nuclear and coal-fired plants.
“The Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles placed in the buildings of a coach-repair plant with high-precision long-range air-based missiles on the outskirts of Kyiv,” Tass reported, citing Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
Destroyed tanks and equipment were supplies by Eastern European countries, according to Konashenkov.
Russia will strike targets that it hasn’t hit previously, if longer-range missiles are delivered to Ukraine, Putin said in an interview with Rossiya-1 TV channel.
All the “hassle” about additional weapon deliveries has “only one goal — to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” he said. If long-range missiles are supplied, “we will draw appropriate conclusions from this and will use our means of destruction, which are ample, to strike objects that we have not yet struck.”
Ukraine has been asking its partners to provide long-range weapons so it can defend itself in Donbas, where Russian troops are making slow but steady advances. The US said it will ship the systems, which can fire missiles as far as 80 kilometers as Kyiv promised it won’t strike targets inside Russia.
A Russian cruise missile “flew critically low over the South Ukraine nuclear power plant,” Ukrainian state-run nuclear power producer Energoatom said on Telegram. It said the rocket flew overhead in the direction of Kyiv, where explosions were heard this morning.
Russia targeted railway infrastructure in Kyiv, Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said.
The situation in Luhansk region, where Russian troops continue to storm the city of Sievierodonetsk, remains “extremely difficult,” Governor Serhiy Haiday said on Telegram. There are damages reported at the Azot chemical factory in Sievierodonetsk, as well as in another large city, Lysychansk, and other areas, he said.
Russian troops now control the eastern part of Sievierodonetsk, Ukrainian authorities said.
Several explosions occurred in Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi districts in Kyiv, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram channel on Sunday morning. There are currently no casualties as a result of “missile strikes on infrastructure” targets, he said, adding one person was sent to hospital and rescue services are still working in the affected areas.
Ukrainian air defense shot down a missile over Obukhiv district in the Kyiv region on Sunday, the regional administration reported on Telegram.