Russian cruise missiles attacked and partially destroyed a military base near Kyiv, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Thursday.
“Around 5 a.m. (2 a.m. GMT), the enemy launched an attack by firing six Kalibr cruise missiles at a military unit in Lyuty in the Kyiv region,” senior military official Oleksiy Gromov told reporters.
According to him, one building on the base was destroyed and two others damaged, while one of the six missiles was shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses. These were fired from Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, according to the same source.
More shelling from multiple rocket launchers targeted the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine, fired from neighboring Belarus, an ally of Moscow, Gromov added, citing “casualties” in the Ukrainian military.
According to him, Russian forces are still trying to advance near Seversk and Bakhmout in the Donbass, an industrial region Moscow wants to capture. The situation there is “difficult but completely under control,” Gromov assured.
In the occupied Kherson region in the south of the country, where Ukrainian forces are waging a counter-offensive, three villages have been recaptured from the Russians in the past two weeks, he added.
Other Ukrainian officials on Thursday reported Russian shelling in several areas.
“It’s a busy morning. Once again we have the horror of rockets,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted on Telegram, assuring that Kyiv “will not surrender and will not give up”.
At least one person was killed and two injured during a strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Valentin Reznichenko said by telegram.
The governor of the Mykolayiv region in the south of the country reported a “massive” rocket fire that destroyed a school and left at least one injured.
The mayor of Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city in the north-east, mentioned two S-300 missile attacks that caused fires.