Several explosions have rocked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the cities of Lviv, Ternopil and Dnipro, after Russia accused Ukraine of orchestrating a powerful blast that damaged a key bridge linking Russia and Crimea.
Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne quoted emergency services on Monday as saying there were dead and wounded in Kyiv but gave no further details of casualties.
“Several explosions in the Shevchenskivskyi district – in the centre of the capital,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. “Details later.”
Reuters witness saw a huge carter at one of the city centre’s intersections and nearby cars completely wrecked, blackened and pitted with shrapnel.
Pure, pointless revenge. It won’t make Ukraine give up, and it won’t make its backers give up. All it does it strengthen the case for additional air and missile defence. https://t.co/P6QdsKmnZ4
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 10, 2022
Explosions were also reported in Lviv, Ternopil and Zhytomyr in Ukraine’s west, and in Dnipro in central Ukraine.
Russia abandoned an early advance on Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance bolstered by Western arms.
Since then Moscow and its proxies have focused on the south and Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and its neighbour Donetsk, deploying overwhelming artillery in some of the heaviest ground fighting in Europe since World War II.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of orchestrating what he called a terrorist attack on a key bridge linking Russia and Crimea, as he prepares to hold a meeting of his security council amid calls for reprisals.
A blast on Saturday on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, a major supply route for Moscow’s forces in southern Ukraine, prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials but no claim of responsibility.
“There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” Putin said on Sunday in a video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.
“This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services.”
The bridge is a vital artery for the port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based, as well as an imposing symbol of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The damage to the bridge came amid battlefield defeats for Russia and initial reports from Ukrainian officials of a mass burial site discovered in the recently liberated eastern town of Lyman.
Mr Putin’s anger over the suspected attack also coincided with growing concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons, after Mr Putin repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.
Images showed part of the bridge’s road blown away, although rail services and partial road traffic resumed.
The Russian transport ministry, quoted by RIA news agency, said nearly 1500 people and 162 heavy cargoes had travelled by ferry across the Kerch Strait since the explosion.
Mr Putin opened the 19-kilometre bridge linking Crimea to Russia with great fanfare in 2018.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.
A strike on an apartment in the city on Sunday killed at least 13 people and injured 87 others, including 10 children, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russian aircraft launched at least 12 missiles in Sunday’s attack, partially destroying a nine-storey apartment block, levelling five other residential buildings and damaging many more, Starukh said on state-run television.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack as “absolute evil”.
“This was a deliberate hit. Whoever gave the order and whoever carried it out knew what they were targeting,” he said in a video address.
Zaporizhzhia city, about 52 kilometres from a Russian-held nuclear power plant, has been under frequent shelling in recent weeks, with 19 people killed on Thursday.
Russia denies targeting civilians and Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian-installed administration in Zaporizhzhia, said Ukrainian forces had shelled the city for “propaganda purposes”.
Most of the Zaporizhzhia region, including the nuclear plant, have been under Russian control since the early days of Russia’s invasion in February.
The capital of the region, Zaporizhzhia city, remains under Ukrainian control.
-Reuters