Saturday January 14, 2023 | 9:40 a.m.
The offensive was aimed at critical infrastructure in the city, explained the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, on Telegram. An unidentified infrastructure was hit and emergency services were working on the scene after the attack, kyiv’s military administration said.
Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper river, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Fragments of a missile landed in a non-residential area of the Holosiivskyi neighborhood on the right bank, and a building in the area caught fire, the councilor added. So far no victims have been reported.
The number of affected facilities was not immediately clear. The Ukrainian capital had not been attacked since the night of January 1. On the outskirts of kyiv, a residential building in the town of Kopyliv was hit and the windows of nearby houses were blown up, Tymoshenko said.
A total of 18 houses were damaged in the region, said the governor, Oleksii Kuleba. “There are damaged roofs and windows” but no casualties were reported, Kuleba said in a Telegram post. In addition, a fire in a “critical infrastructure” in the province was brought under control, he added. Earlier on Saturday, two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, the second largest city in the country, reported the governor of the homonymous region.
Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces fired two S-300 missiles towards the city’s industrial district. The target of the attacks were “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (peripheral) region,” he noted. No casualties were reported but emergency power outages were possible both in the city and in other population centers, he added.
The attacks came amid conflicting reports about the fate of the disputed salt town of Soledar in the east of the country. Russia said its forces seized the town, marking a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating defeats on the battlefield. Both the Ukrainian authorities and the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, insist that the fighting continues.
Moscow has presented the battle for Soledar and the nearby city of Bakhmut as the key to capturing the eastern Donbas region, which includes the partially occupied provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and as a way to stop the best of Ukrainian forces from prevent them from launching counterattacks elsewhere.
But this goes for both sides, as kyiv claims its staunch defense of eastern strongholds has helped cripple Russian troops.
Western officials and analysts say the value of the two cities is more symbolic than strategic.
