Russia confirmed on Friday that it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit by the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had deployed “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” that “destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv.”
The attack was the first of such on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks, and in which a journalist also died.
The journalist, Vera Gyrych, was a producer for the United States-funded Radio, Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was killed when the Russian missile hit the building where she lived in Kyiv, the media group said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes, which immediately followed his talks with the UN chief, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything that the organisation represents”.
Earlier that day, Guterres had toured Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs where Moscow was alleged to have committed war crimes. Russia, however, denied killing civilians.
Germany said the “inhumane” attack showed Russian President Vladimir Putin had “no respect whatsoever for international law.”
It was gathered that the powerful blast had ripped out walls and doors, leaving piles of rubble on the ground.
“I think Russians aren’t afraid of anything, not even the world’s judgement,” the deputy director of a heavily damaged clinic, Anna Hromovych, told newsmen as she and others were cleaning up the devastation on Friday.
Putin was said to be, nevertheless, due to attend November’s G20 summit, according to President Joko Widodo of host nation Indonesia. Zelensky had also been invited.
AFP
