Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia is trying to “humiliate” the United Nations with its attack on Kyiv.
The Ukrainian President condemned Russia’s airstrikes on Kyiv yesterday, which took place while the UN Secretary-General was visiting the capital.
Zelensky said that the missiles occurred immediately after his talks with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. This says a lot about Russia’s attitude towards global institutions, Zelensky said, and accused Russia’s leadership of trying to humiliate the United Nations and everything it represents.
Russia’s actions require an appropriate, powerful response, Zelensky said.
Moscow confirmed that it carried out airstrikes on Kyiv while Guterres was visiting there. The Russian defense ministry said in its daily briefing today that two “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv on Thursday night.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, however, that a huge 25-story residential building in Kyiv was hit in the strike as well.
Russia also attacked other cities across the country, including Fastiv and Odesa, which Zelensky said proves that Ukraine cannot yet let its guard down. “We cannot think that the war is over,” he said. “We still have to fight.”
The attack on Kyiv comes as the situation within the southern city of Mariupol deteriorates “beyond a humanitarian catastrophe.” Inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, hundreds of people are trapped and holding out.
Recent Russian airstrikes against the plant’s field hospital have meant there is no vital medical equipment and that people have very little food and water left.
Head of the military and civil administration in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, Pavlo Kyrylenko, vowed to repel a Russian offensive that began in the area in the north. He said more fighting is expected, and that the Ukrainian forces are holding back the offensive.
NATO has scrambled fighter planes over the past few days multiple times in order to track and intercept Russian planes near alliance airspace. It said that Russian planes were particularly active over the Baltic and Black Seas.
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