Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv faces missile barrage after Zelenskyy targets Russian satellite network
Kyiv mayor says attack has caused fires in at least two districts; Ukraine hits Russian rocket facility in long-range strike. What we know on day 1,636Russian forces launched a missile attack on Kyiv early on Sunday, sparking fires in at least two districts of the Ukrainian capital, the city’s mayor said. Kyiv’s military administration said one person had been injured. Witnesses reported explosions in the city amid air alerts that sounded after 2am.Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said falling debris had caused a fire in a non-residential part of a northern suburb. Several cars were on fire, and another fire had broken out in an area just south of the city centre, he said. Unofficial Telegram channels posted photos of what were described as market stalls ablaze. Russia has in recent weeks been staging intensive air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.Ukraine says long-range strikes hit a Russian military airfield and a rocket centre that supports Russia’s nascent Starlink-style satellite internet network. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said Flamingo cruise missiles struck the rocket facility, about 900km from Ukraine’s border, as part of Kyiv’s campaign to pressure Moscow to end the war by targeting sites deep inside Russia.“It is important that Russia’s war potential be reduced. Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia – through concrete damage to specific facilities,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. He said the airfield hosted aircraft used to attack Ukraine.Ukraine’s armed forces said direct hits were recorded at the airfield in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region and the Progress rocket centre in Samara region, sparking fires at both sites. The Samara plant produces rockets used to launch satellites for the Rassvet broadband network, which Russia is developing as an alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink. Starlink operates in Ukraine but not in Russia, giving Kyiv an advantage in drone operations and battlefield communications.In Samara region, local officials said air defences had repelled a “massive missile attack”. “Samara’s industrial infrastructure sustained localised damage,” Ivan Noskov, head of the regional capital, said in an online post. Emergency services were working at the scene, he said.Russia has asked Washington and Ankara to explain reports of possible plans to transfer to Kyiv a “substantial arsenal” of US weapons and ammunition held by Turkey, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday. Such a transfer would cause “serious harm … to our bilateral relations with Washington and Ankara,” the spokesperson said in a statement.A Russian strike on an apartment block in south-eastern Ukraine on Saturday killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 people, local officials said. Drones hit the building in the town of Marhanets, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday said in the past 24 hours its drones and missiles had struck Ukrainian logistics centres and energy and transport infrastructure used by the Ukrainian army, as well as assembly workshops for long-range drones and drone boats.North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has told Russian president Vladimir Putin in a letter that he was “proud” of their countries’ strong ties, state media reported. North Korea has become a key ally of the Kremlin, sending troops to support Moscow’s war effort in return for economic benefits and military technology, analysts say. Kim added that he had a “firm belief” that Russia would thrive and defend its “territorial integrity” under Putin’s “wise leadership”.In a letter to Kim delivered on Friday to mark Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of the second world war, Putin said relations between the two countries had reached the “unprecedentedly high level of comprehensive strategic partnership”. “Our states are actively cooperating in all the sectors while making concerted efforts to ensure the regional security and stability,” the Russian leader said.The exchange of letters follows Ukraine’s accusation this month that Moscow had launched North Korean ballistic missiles in a strike that killed at least nine people and wounded dozens. Kyiv has also recently said that up to 50,000 North Korean troops are due to deploy to Russia, although it has provided no evidence to back the claim or a timeframe for the deployment. Continue reading...
Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan
Campaigners fear deeper diplomatic contacts are undermining demands for improvements in human rights The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare. Continue reading...
