Russia-Ukraine crisis: ‘Several explosions’ in Kyiv, says mayor

The battle for Ukraine’s eastern city of Severodonetsk was being waged street by street, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while explosions rocked the capital Kyiv early Sunday.

“Several explosions in Darnytsky and Dniprovsky districts of the city. Services are extinguishing,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram shortly after air raid warnings sounded in Kyiv and several other cities.

“There are currently no dead from missile strikes on infrastructure. One wounded was hospitalised. The services are still working in the affected areas.”

Separately, at least 11 civilians were reported killed in the Lugansk region where Severodonetsk is located, the nearby Donetsk region and in the southern city of Mykolaiv.

“The situation in Severodonetsk, where street fighting continues, remains extremely difficult,” Zelensky said in his daily address Saturday evening.

Cities in the eastern Donbas area at the heart of the Russian offensive were under “constant air strikes, artillery and missile fire” but Ukrainian forces were holding their ground, he said.

Severodonetsk is the largest city still in Ukrainian hands in the Lugansk region of the Donbas, where Russian forces have been gradually advancing in recent weeks after retreating or being repelled from other areas, including around the capital Kyiv.

Russia’s army claimed some Ukrainian military units were withdrawing from Severodonetsk but Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Ukrainian forces were fighting to retake the city.

“Our soldiers have managed to redeploy, build a line of defence,” he said in an interview broadcast on Telegram Saturday.

“We are currently doing everything necessary to re-establish total control” of the city.

Earlier, Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said the Russians had captured most of Severodonetsk, but that Ukraine’s forces were pushing them back.

“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its power, all its reserves in this direction,” said Gaiday.

“Russians are blowing up the bridges, so that we cannot supply reinforcements to our boys, who are in Severodonetsk,” he added.

For its part, Moscow claims to have destroyed two Ukrainian command centres and six ammunition depots in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

“Ukrainian forces are successfully slowing down Russian operations to encircle Ukrainian positions in Luhansk Oblast as well as Russian frontal assaults in Severodonetsk through prudent and effective local counterattacks in Severodonetsk”, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment late Saturday.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions forced to flee and towns turned into rubble since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an all-out assault on his pro-Western neighbour on February 24.

Western powers have imposed increasingly stringent sanctions on Russia and supplied arms to Ukraine, but divisions have emerged on how to react.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday Putin had committed a “fundamental error” but that Russia should not be “humiliated” so that a diplomatic solution could be found.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted Saturday by saying such calls “only humiliate France” and any country taking a similar position.

“It is Russia that humiliates itself. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place,” he said.

Despite diplomatic efforts, the conflict has raged in the south and east of the country.

Putin said Friday there was “no problem” to export grain from Ukraine, via Kyiv- or Moscow-controlled ports or even through Central Europe.