Ukraine 'epicentre of unbearable heartache' says UN chief

The head of the United Nations said Ukraine has become "an epicentre of unbearable heartache and pain" — a description underscored a short time later by the first Russian strike on the capital since Moscow's forces retreated weeks ago.

Russia pounded targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building and wounded 10 people, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine's emergency services.

The bombardment came barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a news conference with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around Kyiv and condemned the attacks on civilians.

Meanwhile, explosions were reported across the country, in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said rockets were intercepted by air defences.

Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.

In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing killed and wounded more people. And authorities warned that a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

In Zaporizhzhia, a crucial way station for tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol, an 11-year-old boy was among at least three people wounded in a rocket attack that authorities said was the first to hit a residential area in the southern city since the fighting began. Shards of glass cut the boy's leg to the bone.

Vadym Vodostoyev, the boy's father, said: "It just takes one second and you're left with nothing."

In Lyman town near Slovyansk, where Russian forces are reportedly trying to advance as part of their Donbas push, another tragedy unfolded on Monday when shelling rained on Tatiana Maksagory's home.

"There was such a blast and then smoke; you couldn't hear anything," she said, crying outside a hospital with a wound in her neck. "You couldn't see anything in front of your eyes, and then I see that my grandson is lying on the ground."

Maksagory's 14-year-old grandson, Igor, was declared dead after emergency services drove him to the hospital. Her daughter was in serious condition and her son-in-law was also killed.

"Grandma, will I live?" she said Igor asked her when they were in the basement waiting for help. "I said that he would live. But look what happened, I betrayed him. I am alive and he is not. I wish I had died and he had survived. I lived much more than him. I will never forgive myself for it."

Ukraine's military said Russian troops have subjected several places in the Donbas to "intense fire" Thursday and that over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces had repelled six attacks in the region.

Four civilians were also killed in heavy shelling of residential areas in the Luhansk region of the Donbas, according to the regional governor.

Columns of smoke could be seen rising at different points across the Donetsk region of the Donbas, and artillery and sirens were heard on and off.

The fresh attacks came as Guterres surveyed the destruction in small towns outside the capital that saw some of the worst horrors of the first onslaught of the fighting. He condemned the atrocities committed in towns like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia withdrew in early April in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance.

"Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians," the UN chief lamented.

In the attack on Kyiv, explosions shook the city and flames poured out the windows of the residential high-rise and another building. The capital had been relatively unscathed in recent weeks since Moscow refocused its efforts on the Donbas.

The explosions in northwestern Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky district came as residents have been increasingly returning to the city. Cafes and other businesses have reopened, and growing numbers of people have been out and about, enjoying the spring weather.

It was not immediately clear how far the attack was from Guterres.

Ukraine has urged its allies to send even more military equipment to fend off the Russians. US President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to help Ukraine.