Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces launched a missile attack in the Kyiv area Thursday for the first time in weeks and also hit the northern Chernihiv region in what Ukraine said was retaliation for confronting in the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to retake the occupied Kherson region in the south of the country, territory occupied by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces at the beginning of the war.
Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Lyutizh, on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official of the Ukrainian General Staff.
He said the attack destroyed one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.
Fifteen people were injured in the Russian attacks, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Kuleba linked the attacks to State Day, a commemoration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and which Ukraine marked on Thursday.
“Russia, with the help of missiles, is increasing the revenge of the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba said on Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already foiled Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.”
Chernihiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that the Russians also fired missiles from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv region had not been attacked for weeks.
Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either. The new strikes come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, urged Russian forces to “liberate the Russian cities founded by the Russian people: Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk.”
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was also bombed overnight, according to the mayor. Authorities said a police officer was killed in a Russian bombing of a power plant in the Kharkiv region.
The southern city of Mykolaiv was also fired upon, and one person was reported injured.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military maintained a counterattack in the Kherson region, knocking out a key bridge over the Dnieper River on Wednesday.
Ukrainian media quoted Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich as saying that the operation to liberate Kherson is underway, with Kyiv’s forces planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options: “withdraw, if possible , surrender or be destroyed.”
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the Russians are concentrating maximum forces in the direction of Kherson and warned: “A large-scale movement of their troops has begun.”
The British military said Ukraine has used its new Western-supplied long-range artillery to damage at least three of the Dnieper bridges that Russia relies on to supply its forces.
Ukraine’s presidential office said Thursday morning that Russian shelling of cities and towns over the past 24 hours killed at least five civilians, all in eastern Donetsk province, and wounded nine.
The fighting in recent weeks has been centered in Donetsk province. It has intensified in recent days as Russian forces appeared to be emerging from an “operational pause” after capturing neighboring Luhansk province.
Ukrainian emergency authorities said two civilians were killed in a Russian shelling of the city of Toretsk. A missile hit a residential building early Thursday morning, destroying two floors, officials said.
“Once again the terror of missiles. We will not surrender. … We will not be intimidated,” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.
Military analysts believe Russian forces are focusing their efforts on capturing the towns of Bakhmut and Siversk in Donetsk province.
Zelenskyy instituted Statehood Day to remind Ukrainians of the country’s history as an independent state. The commemoration honors Prince Vladimir, who made Christianity the official religion of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus more than 1,000 years ago.
“You could say that for us, every day is a State Day,” the president said in a State Day speech.
“We fight every day so that everyone on the planet can finally understand: We are not a colony, not an enclave, not a protectorate, not a province, not an eyalet, not a crown land, not a part of foreign empires, not a part of a country. , not a federal republic, not an autonomy, not a province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state,” Zelenskyy said.
The Kremlin also claims the heritage of Kyivan Rus. In 2016, Putin erected a monument to Prince Vladimir near the Kremlin.
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