Kyiv, Ukraine — Several loud explosions rocked the center of the Ukrainian capital Monday, a week after Russia orchestrated massive, coordinated air strikes across the country.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klichko said the central Shevchenko district of the capital had been hit and urged residents to take shelter.
He said several residential buildings were on fire and rescuers were on-site, the Reuters news service reports.
No further details were immediately known.
The explosions hit the same central Kyiv district where a week ago a missile struck a children’s playground and intersection near the Kyiv National University’s main buildings.
Social media posts showed a fire in the area of the apparent strike, with black smoke rising into the early morning light.
Russian forces struck Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, wrote Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, in a post on the Telegram social media site.”
“The Russians think it will help them, but it shows their desperation,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Russia has repeatedly been using the so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations.
The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last night in his evening address that there was heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the bulk of the industrial east known as the Donbas, and were two of four regions annexed by Russia in September in defiance of international law.
On Sunday, the Russian-backed regime in the Donetsk region said Ukraine had shelled its central administrative building in a direct hit. No casualties were reported.
