Russian warplanes fired missiles at Kyiv, Ukraine said

Ukraine’s air force and the city’s mayor said Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers fired missiles into Kyiv from the Caspian Sea early on Sunday and exploded in two of the eastern districts of the Ukrainian capital.

Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said at least one person was hospitalized, although no immediate death was reported. Thick smoke rose in the sky over Durnitsky and Dniprovsky districts, where the explosions took place.

According to Serhi Leshchenko, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, the attack targeted railway infrastructure.

Russia’s defense ministry said it fired long-range rockets into Kyiv and destroyed T-72 tanks and armored vehicles that were supplied to Ukraine by Eastern European countries and kept in a railway carriage repair building.

Ukraine’s air force said the Ukrainian air force destroyed a cruise missile at around 6 a.m. local time after identifying incoming missiles.

The missiles hit the capital for the first time since late April, when a Radio Liberty producer was killed in a Russian missile attack that hit the building she lived in.

“According to preliminary data, (the Russians) fired missiles from Tu-95 aircraft from the Caspian Sea,” the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement.

Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolik, called on the West to impose more sanctions on Russia to punish it for attacks and to supply Ukraine with more weapons.

“The Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks. Today’s missile attacks in Kyiv have only one goal – to kill as many people as possible, ”he wrote.

The mayor of the historic town of Brovari, about 20 km (12 miles) from the center of Kyiv, urged people to stay inside their homes as there were reports of a sooty smell from the smoke.

Life in Kyiv has been relatively attack-free in recent weeks, with Moscow being the focus of its offensive in the east and south, despite continued Russian aggression and widespread destruction in Ukraine.

Air raid sirens regularly disrupt life in Kyiv, but there have been no major attacks on the city in several weeks.

The Darnytskyi District on the left bank of the Dnipro River stretches from the outskirts of Kyiv to the riverbank, while the Dniproovskyi Region to the north of the city lies along the river.

Oleksandr Honcharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk, formerly in the Donetsk region, reported overnight attacks on the city that resulted in extensive damage but no casualties.

On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said the country’s troops had recaptured the beleaguered city of Svirodonetsk in retaliation against Russia.