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On Monday, cruise missiles attacked Ukraine and put the air defense systems of several cities, including the capital kyiv, on alert. Most of the Russian missiles were intercepted, according to the Ukrainian authorities. However, some hit the Dnipropetrovsk region and caused several injuries and serious damage to a railway station. For its part, Russia reported an explosion on its territory that caused the derailment of a freight train.
Air raid sirens sounded again in kyiv early Monday, followed by the sounds of explosions caused by Ukrainian defense systems intercepting Russian missiles.
Ukrainian authorities confirmed that 18 cruise missiles were fired in total from the Murmansk and Caspian regions, and 15 of them were intercepted, according to Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi. For his part, the head of the Kiev city administration, Serhii Popko, maintained that all the missiles fired at the capital were shot down, as well as some drones.
However, Russian airstrikes caused widespread damage 500 kilometers from kyiv, in the Pavlohrad district of the Dnipropetrovsk region. The missiles hit a railway hub near the southern and eastern fronts. According to preliminary assessments, at least 34 people were injured in the district, including five children and two women who are in serious condition. In addition, several dozen buildings were damaged.
“The attack damaged 19 apartment blocks, 25 houses, 3 schools, 3 kindergartens and several shops,” said Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council.
The attacks also damaged the infrastructure of Ukraine’s electricity grid, which will take several days to repair, according to Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko. Nearly 20,000 people in the city of Kherson lost power, along with an unspecified number of people in the Dnipropetrovsk region, including the city of Dnipro.
Some Ukrainian sources reported that the affected site was a plant that produced solid fuel for Soviet-era rocket engines and had several expired engines waiting to be dismantled, although that claim could not be immediately verified.
Vladimir Rogov, A Russian-installed official in the occupied Zaporizhia region near Dnipropetrovsk posted images of Pavlohrad and claimed that Russian forces had successfully attacked military targets. In recent days, Russia has claimed that the recent attacks on Ukraine are aimed at hampering kyiv’s plans for a long-overdue counter-offensive on the eastern front.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, its forces carried out missile strikes overnight Sunday and early Monday against Ukrainian military sites, including munitions factories. The size of the fire in Pavlohrad suggests that Russia may have hit a major arms cache.
Attack on railway system in Russia
Along with airstrikes in Ukraine, an explosion in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, derailed a Russian freight train on Monday, the local governor said in a post on social media.
“An unidentified explosive device went off, as a result of which a freight train locomotive derailed,” Bryansk President Alexander Bogomaz explained on Telegram, adding that no casualties were reported. Local authorities added that the derailed train was carrying “fuel and construction materials.”
So far the perpetrators of the explosion are unknown. However, Russian authorities are investigating the incident as part of incidents involving Russia’s rail system, which have increased in the 14 months since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian response to the threat of a Ukrainian counteroffensive
Monday’s attacks on Ukraine mark the second day of large-scale Russian airstrikes, after 23 Ukrainian civilians were killed by a Russian missile on an apartment building in the city of Uman last Friday. These waves of missiles are the most affected in two months.
Russia appears to have reverted to its winter tactic of massive airstrikes across the country in response to Ukraine’s planned spring counteroffensive to retake occupied land in the Donbas region. kyiv is preparing to unleash its counterattack using hundreds of Western-supplied armored vehicles and tanks, including Germany’s Leopard 2s and Britain’s Challengers. According to the Ukrainian government, everything is ready to start the operation.
“When it is the will of God, the weather and the decision of our commanders, we will start the counteroffensive,” Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, said at a news conference in Kiev on April 28.
On Saturday, two Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian oil depot in Sevastopol, in the annexed Crimean peninsula. The president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has reiterated that in the next counteroffensive his country would seek to recover that region annexed by Russia in 2014.
With Reuters, AP and local media
