Russia hits Kyiv with missiles as Vladimir Putin warns West on arms

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Ukrainian air defences shot down one incoming missile at around 6am local time, the military said.

One Russian missile that was likely headed for Kyiv also flew “critically low” over a major nuclear power plant in the southern Mykolaiv region, state-run nuclear power operator Energoatom said on Telegram.

Smoke rises after Russian missile strikes in Kyiv on Sunday.Credit:AP

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its missiles had destroyed T-72 tanks and armoured vehicles supplied to Ukraine by eastern European countries that were housed in a rail car repair facility in Kyiv. Britain’s Defence Ministry said the missiles struck rail infrastructure.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian railway, confirmed that four missiles had hit the Darnytsia rail car repair facility in eastern Kyiv, but denied there had been any military hardware at the site.

“Their [Russia’s] target is the economy and the civilian population,” he said.

The sprawling railway system has served as a vital lifeline as Russia’s February 24 invasion has smashed the Ukrainian economy and severed export routes via the Black Sea.

The missiles were the first to hit the capital since late April when a Radio Liberty producer was killed in a Russian missile strike that hit her building.

“According to preliminary data, the [Russians] launched missiles from Tu-95 aircraft from the Caspian Sea,” the Ukrainian air force said in a statement.

In a television interview that aired on Sunday, Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the conflict.

“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said.

He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change the military situation for Ukraine’s government, which he said was merely making up for losses of similar rockets.

If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, he added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck.”

The US has stopped short of offering Ukraine longer-range weapons that could fire deep into Russia.

But the four medium-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems in the security package include launchers on wheels that allow troops to strike a target and then quickly move away — which could be useful against Russian artillery on the battlefield.

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Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called on the West to impose more sanctions on Russia to punish it for the strikes on Sunday and to supply more weapons to Ukraine.

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

The mayor of the historic town of Brovary, around 20 kilometres from Kyiv’s centre, urged people to remain inside their homes as there had been reports of a strange smell coming from the smoke.

Despite continuing Russian offensives in Ukraine and the widespread destruction, life in Kyiv has been relatively attack-free recently after Moscow turned its attention to the east and south.

Air raid sirens regularly disrupt life in Kyiv, but there had been no major strikes on the city in several weeks.

The Darnytskyi district on the left bank of the Dnipro River stretches from the fringes of Kyiv to the river’s shores while the Dniprovskyi area in the city’s north lies along the river.

Oleksandr Honcharenko, mayor of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region in the east, also reported fresh strikes on the city, resulting in widespread damage but no casualties.

On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said the country’s troops had recaptured a swathe of the city of Sievierodonetsk in a counteroffensive.

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