At least three explosions were heard in Kyiv on Monday morning as air raid alarms sounded across the city. Ukrainian officials reported that the Russians attacked the capital of Ukraine with kamikaze drones. One of the explosions was heard near the center of the Ukrainian capital.
According to the first information, at least two people died and other three were injured.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that a pregnant woman and her husband were among the victims of Monday’s bombing, The woman was six months pregnant, according to the quoted source.
The Ministry of Defense in Kyiv reported on Monday morning that “in the last 13 hours, the Army of Ukraine shot down 37 Iranian Shahed-136 drones and 3 cruise missiles launched by Russian terrorists.”
The attack comes a week after the capital was hit by several Russian rockets during rush hour, which left 19 dead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week’s strikes were in retaliation for the Crimean bridge bombing, which he blamed on Ukraine. He later said that most of the targets had been hit and that the goal was not to destroy Ukraine, so the bombing would not continue.
At the same time, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, declared that in the regions of eastern Donetsk and Luhansk there is a “very serious” situation, with the “heaviest” fighting being near the city of Bakhmut.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated, in a new speech, that Ukraine must capture as many “occupiers” as possible, because in this way it will have the opportunity to recover, through exchange, the soldiers who are prisoners of the Russians.
“The occupiers threw anyone they could into the battle against our forces, including 2,000 “prisoners” – they are among the mercenaries there. And they are “sentenced” with heavy penalties for serious crimes. They are kept at the front not only with money, but also with the promise of an amnesty. This is how Russia sponsors terror – it looks for criminals in prisons and promises them freedom if they kill again. Does anyone in the world still doubt that Russia should be officially called a terrorist state? I don’t think so,” Zelensky said.
“I thank all our fighters who heroically maintain their positions near Bakhmut, near Soledar and in all other directions where border clashes take place – in the east, in the south of the country.
The Ukrainian military has said the estimated number of Russians killed since the start of the war has reached 65,000.
423 children killed in Ukraine since the start of the war
On the other hand, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General stated that 423 children have been killed since the beginning of the invasion and that the death toll had risen by 300 in the last 24 hours.
He added that another 810 children were injured in the conflict and that the highest number of victims were in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions.
British Defense Secretary: Russia’s logistical problems worsened after Kerch Bridge explosion
The logistical problems facing Russian forces in southern Ukraine have worsened since the October 8 failure of the bridge over the Kerch Strait, which connects the peninsula Crimea (illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014) from Russian territory, infrastructure with a key role in their supply, the British secret services signaled on Monday in an update of information about the situation on the front in Ukraine, according to Reuters.
The British also say that the Russian forces in southern Ukraine are apparently intensifying their logistical supply flow through Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, in an attempt to compensate for the reduced transport capacity of the bridge that was partially damaged in the morning of October 8.
Russia has stated more than once that the bridge, a project dear to President Vladimir Putin, is well guarded by anti-aircraft defense systems and Russian soldiers, underscoring the reliability of this infrastructure, according to international news agencies.
Russians getting ready for defensive in Lugansk
Serhii Gaidai, the Ukrainian governor of the city of Lugansk, wrote on Telegram that “the Russians are wiping the liberated settlements off the face of the earth with tanks, artillery and anti-aircraft missiles.”
He also said that “the occupiers are placing cubes of concrete and digging trenches throughout the Lugansk region – they are preparing for a long defense,” The Guardian reports.
15,000 Ukrainian soldiers to be trained in the EU, another EUR 500 M for weapons
The European Union is stepping up its military support for Ukraine by launching on Monday a mission to train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers on its territory and a new tranche of 500 million euros for the supply of weapons.
“We have never carried out a mission of this magnitude,” a European official emphasized. The foreign ministers of the 27 member countries will approve these two decisions on Monday, during a meeting in Luxembourg, and the mission will be immediately operational, said a diplomatic source.
Several training missions are in fact underway in various member states, notably in Germany and France, where Ukrainian soldiers are being trained to use European-supplied guns, rocket launchers and air defense systems. France will train “up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers” on its territory, the French Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, announced on Saturday in an interview given to the daily newspaper Le Parisien.