Ukraine Conflict: Kyiv hit by missiles as Oleshky truce looms
One person died in the capital's attack, which occurred hours before a planned pause in fighting in Kherson region.
By Meera Fletcher ·
Russian missile strikes killed one person and injured eight in Kyiv late on Monday, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko. The city's mayor reported that medical facilities, including an intensive care unit, sustained damage during the attack.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that a ballistic missile struck the grounds of a university campus in the capital. He noted on social media that the missiles landed in densely populated areas with no nearby military targets. "This was a strike directly on the city, on its infrastructure," Zelenskyy said.
The attack occurred hours before a humanitarian truce was scheduled to begin in Oleshky, a city in Ukraine's Kherson region under Russian occupation. The pause was set to start at 3am local time, or 0100 GMT, to allow aid into a city where residents have faced shortages of food, water, and medicine. No end date for the truce has been announced.
Oleshky has been contested since Russian forces seized it in 2022. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday that it would halt fire in the Kherson sector for the duration of the ceasefire. Ukraine has accused Russia of preventing residents from leaving, an action Moscow denies. Neither side, nor the United States, has identified who will monitor the truce or described the accompanying humanitarian operation.
Before the strikes on Kyiv, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was still waiting for US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to approve critical missile supplies. "We have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS," he wrote on X. He added that he had instructed his team to raise the matter again with the American side.
In a related development, Romania said on Monday that a network coordinated from Russia started a fire near an arms factory in Brasov on 14 September. Authorities identified two Belarusians and a Ukrainian, all EU residents, as involved. Two suspects were remanded in custody in Germany while preparing similar offences, and the third remains at large in Poland. Russia's embassy in Bucharest could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Brasov fire is part of a series of incidents in Europe that Nato and the EU describe as a hybrid campaign by the Kremlin. Over the past three weeks, at least eight cargo ships have been hit off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, leaving about 34 sailors dead or missing. On the battlefield, Ukraine's 475th Separate Assault Regiment said on Monday that it used a new StarGate drone to evacuate wounded soldiers. The six-rotor aircraft, built by SkyFall, carried two stranded troops to safety near the Russian border in two missions over the past week. Monday marked day 1,707 of the war.
Source: The Guardian
