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Kyiv – A series of strikes struck Kyiv early Sunday, shattering a sense of relative calm following Russia’s withdrawal from the capital in early April, when the Group of Seven began a two-day summit in Germany with the war in Ukraine at the front.
At least one person was killed and several others were injured in the attack, which hit a residential building and a playground, authorities said. This came after the country had suffered an “unusually large series of missile strikes against the Ukrainian rear” the day before, according to the US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War.
The morning blasts were fired by Russian bombers flying over the Caspian Sea, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force said.
Amid the lingering smell of smoke and a dark cloud hovering over the affected area, rescue workers dug up the rubble in the apartment building hours after the blasts. The first person in charge told The Washington Post that she saw a man’s hand sticking out of a pile of rubble. A severely injured woman, who had been trapped under concrete slabs for several hours, was taken by ambulance to an ambulance. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said a 7-year-old girl had also been pulled from the rubble. The murdered is her father.
Gerashchenko showed reporters a damaged Russian passport, which he said belonged to the rescued woman – proof, he said, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was hurting his own citizens. “The Russians are shooting at the Russians,” he tweeted.
Alexei Brazitsky, 55, woke up to the sound of two explosions around 6 a.m. As he watched from his apartment, trying to assess the damage, a third blast shattered his windows and shattered glass on his face.
The nearby factory may have been the target of the strikes, Brazitsky said, but he also suspected Russian forces of deliberately hitting civilians. In his hometown of Donetsk, from which he fled eight years ago to avoid the growing conflict in eastern Ukraine, “Russians are firing on civilian buildings. They’re probably doing the same thing here. “
President Biden called the strikes an example of Russia’s “barbarism” during his first day at the G7 summit in Germany. The leaders of the summit are moving towards further financial isolation of Moscow with a ban on new imports of Russian gold, which could amount to a penalty of tens of billions of dollars.
Russia had to enter its first foreign default of the century at the end of the weekend, with a deadline for overdue interest payments of $ 100 million on government debt. Although Russia has the resources, sanctions that exclude the nation from international payment systems do not allow the country to send money to creditors. Russia’s finance minister has accused the West of forcing Moscow into “artificial debt.”
In eastern Ukraine, Russia continued to carry out air strikes on the city of Lisichansk, the governor said on Sunday. Taking over what Sergei Haidai calls the “last fortress” will give Russia almost complete control over the region.
“Lisichansk is almost unrecognizable,” Haidai said, noting the widespread damage caused by the Russian bombing.
The country’s defense ministry also warned that Russia plans to send military planes to bases in Belarus and involve the country more directly in the war.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky spoke directly to Belarusians in his evening address on Sunday. “The Kremlin has already decided everything for you – your life is worthless to them,” he said. “But you are not slaves or cannon fodder. You don’t have to die. And you can prevent everyone from deciding for you what lies ahead. ”
O’Grady reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Sami Westfall announced from Miami. Konstantin Tatarchuk, Julian Duplian, Matt Viser and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.
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