Russia strikes Kyiv for first time in weeks, battle rages in eastern Ukraine

KYIV: Russia struck Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles early on Sunday for the first time in more than a month, while Ukrainian officials said a counter-attack on the main battlefield in the east had retaken half of the city of Sievierodonetsk.

Dark smoke could be seen from many miles away after the attack on two outlying districts of Kyiv. Moscow said it had hit a repair shop housing tanks sent from eastern Europe.

Ukraine said Russia had carried out the strike using long-range air-launched missiles fired from heavy bombers as far away as the Caspian Sea – a weapon far more valuable than the tanks Russia claimed to have hit.

At least one person was hospitalised but there were no immediate reports of deaths from the strike – a sudden reminder of war in a capital where normal life has largely returned since Russian forces were driven from its outskirts in March.

“The Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks. Today’s missile strikes at Kyiv have only one goal – kill as many as possible,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhailo Podolyak wrote in a tweet.

Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said a Russian cruise missile had flown “critically low” over the country’s second largest nuclear power plant.

The attack was the first big strike on Kyiv since late April, when a missile killed a journalist. Recent weeks have seen Russia focus its destructive might mainly on frontlines in the east and south, although Moscow occasionally strikes elsewhere in what it calls a campaign to degrade Ukraine’s military infrastructure and block Western arms shipments.