Ukraine on Wednesday called on the West to send it the weapons and ammunition it urgently needs after a new “massive” airstrike by Russia that killed at least five people.
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These Russian attacks were particularly aimed at the Ukrainian capital Kiev, where debris from a fired missile fell on a residential building, killing four people and injuring forty.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, took the opportunity to confront Kiev's allies about their promises. He deplored a “confused” situation in the United States, where Congress has not been able to vote on a new package for months in the context of the election campaign ahead of the November presidential election.
Mr Kouleba also called on the European Union to “increase” its supplies of artillery shells, which Ukrainian troops are missing at the front. In particular, he called on the Twenty-Seven to “sign long-term contracts with Ukrainian defense companies,” “realign existing contracts for the supply of grenades to Ukraine,” and “increase imports of ammunition from third countries.”
Wednesday's Russian attacks also came during a visit by European diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, who, like many Western officials before him, had to seek refuge in an air raid shelter during the two years of war, an AFP journalist observed.
Mr Borrell called on Europeans to help Ukraine “at all costs”. EU heads of state and government agreed last Thursday in Brussels to provide additional aid worth 50 billion euros over four years.
64 devices pulled
According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, six regions of Ukraine were targeted by Russia on Wednesday, the first of this magnitude since the end of January, in which rockets and drones were fired in several waves.
In the capital, the alarm was raised just before 6:00 a.m. local time (04:00 GMT) and lasted for three hours. According to AFP journalists on the scene, several series of loud explosions occurred in the city.
In total, Russia fired 44 missiles and 20 explosive drones into Ukraine, said Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny on Telegram. According to him, these include 36 cruise missiles of various types, three ballistic missiles and five S-300 missiles.
Of these total 64 devices, the Ukrainian armed forces intercepted 29 cruise missiles and 15 drones, the same source added.
As usual, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that it had only targeted military targets and that they were “all destroyed.”
In Kiev, debris from a fired rocket fell on a 17-story residential building in the Golosiivsky district (south).
A fire truck used a large crane to extinguish the fire with jets of water, and firefighters also entered the building late in the morning, an AFP journalist noted.
Window burst
Smoke was billowing from windows on several upper floors and the walls were blackened.
“I even saw the rocket flying, it rose and then flew away with the tail on fire, I couldn't see where, then it hit,” local resident Valentyna Kozatchouk, a 63-year-old pensioner, told AFP.
According to her, all the doors leading to the hallway and stairwell were blown out and the windows on her balcony were damaged.
Another resident, Dmytro, feared for his wife, who was on a balcony during the attack.
After hosting his children, he wanted to come back and get his partner. But the rescuers “didn’t let me in,” he explained.
“She might be dead,” he worried.
Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city in the east, was attacked by S-300 rockets, regional governor Oleg Synegoubov said.
In the Lviv region (west), a rocket hit an industrial site in the town of Drogobych, around fifty kilometers from the Polish border, without causing any casualties, regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said on Telegram. However, according to the same source, another missile was launched in this region.