Russia strikes missile factory near Kyiv

A resident walks with a bicycle along a street, which has been damaged due to the ongoing conflict with Russia, near the Illich Steel and Iron Works factory, in the southern Ukraine port city of Mariupol.

Russian strikes pounded a military factory near Kyiv that makes the missiles Ukraine claims it used to sink the Moskva naval flagship, with Moscow vowing renewed attacks on the capital. A workshop and an administrative building at the Vizar plant, which lies near Kyiv’s international Zhuliany airport, were seriously damaged in the overnight strikes, an AFP journalist saw. Russia had earlier announced it had used Kalibr sea-based long-range missiles to hit the factory, which Ukraine’s state weapons manufacturer Ukroboronprom says produced Neptune missiles. “There were five hits. My employee was in the office and got thrown off his feet by the blast,” Andrei Sizov, a 47-year-old owner of a nearby wood workshop, told AFP. “They are making us pay for destroying the Moskva.” It was the first major Russian strike around the Ukrainian capital in over two weeks. The Kyiv regional governor said there were at least two other Russian strikes yesterday, without providing details on damage or casualties. Oleksandr Pavliuk said civilians thinking about returning to the capital should “wait for quieter times”. The governor of Ukraine’s southern Odessa region, Maxim Marchenko, said that the 186m Russian missile cruiser was hit by Ukrainian Neptune missiles on Wednesday. The Moskva had been leading Russia’s naval effort in the seven-week conflict, and the circumstances around its sinking and the fate of its crew of more than 500 remain murky. It was by far Russia’s largest vessel in the Black Sea fleet, equipped with guided missiles to shoot down planes and attack the shore, and radar to provide air defence cover for the fleet. Russia’s defence ministry said a blast on the vessel was the result of exploding ammunition and that the resulting damage had caused it to “lose its balance” as it was being towed to port on Thursday. Moscow has used its naval power to blockade Ukrainian ports and threaten a potential amphibious landing along the coast. Without its flagship, its ability to menace Ukraine from the sea could be crippled. No warship of such size has been sunk during conflict since Argentina’s General Belgrano, torpedoed by the British in the 1982 Falklands war. Natalia Gumeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military forces, said that Russia would seek revenge for the sinking and that bad weather had meant the Moskva’s crew could not be evacuated. “We saw that other ships tried to assist it, but even the forces of nature were on Ukraine’s side because the storm made both the rescue operation and crew evacuations impossible,” Gumeniuk said in a briefing. The fleet has been blockading the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, where Russian officials say they are in full control although Ukrainian fighters are still holed up in the city’s fortress-like steelworks. Moscow, which invaded Ukraine partly because of deepening ties between Kyiv and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), warned yesterday of unspecified “consequences” should Finland and Sweden join the US-led defence alliance. The two countries are considering joining Nato after Russia’s devastating invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. “They will automatically find themselves on the Nato frontline,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Shortly afterwards, Finland’s European Affairs Minister Tytti Tuppurainen said it was “highly likely” that her country would apply to join Nato. “The people of Finland, they seem to have already made up their mind and there is a huge majority for the Nato membership,” she told Britain’s Sky News. Unlike Sweden, Finland neighbours Russia, from which it declared independence in 1917 after 150 years of Russian rule. Russia said yesterday that it was expelling 18 members of the European Union mission after the bloc kicked out some of Moscow’s representatives for spying. The EU condemned the “unjustified” move, saying in a statement that “Russia’s chosen course of action will further deepen its international isolation”. Russian forces last month started withdrawing from around the Ukrainian capital as they were redeployed to focus on territory in the east of the country, but the city remains vulnerable to missile strikes. “The number and scale of missile strikes against targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or sabotage committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime on Russian territory,” Russia’s defence ministry said. “As a result of the strike on the Zhulyansky machine-building plant ‘Vizar’, the workshops for the production and repair of long-range and medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as anti-ship missiles, were destroyed,” the ministry said. Seizing the eastern Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists control the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the occupied Crimean peninsula. Ukraine said Russian strikes had killed five people in the area, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow’s forces were aiming to “destroy” the region. A Russian attack on buses ferrying civilians from the war-torn east killed seven people and wounded more than two dozen, Ukraine said yesterday. Ukrainian authorities have been urging people in the south and the Donbas area in the east to move west in advance of a large-scale Russian offensive. Mariupol is in ruins 50 days into Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine. Thousands of civilians are believed to have died in the city, many of their bodies still trapped in apartment buildings. Mariupol’s residents have started coming outside in search of food, water and an escape route. The UN’s World Food Programme appealed for access to Ukrainians trapped in war zones including Mariupol, saying those besieged were starving to death. “It’s one thing when people are suffering from the devastation of war. It’s another thing when they’re being starved to death,” WFP executive director David Beasley said in a statement.