Russia attacked western Kyiv with two cruise missiles late yesterday, as the UN secretary general visited the Ukrainian capital. Two loud explosions rocked Kyiv on Thursday evening, after António Guterres went to the site of massacres and mass graves on the city’s outskirts, and met Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces destroyed the production facilities of a space-rocket plant in Kyiv with high-precision long-range missiles. It is being reported that the journalist Vera Girich was killed in the missile strikes on the city.
The ministry posted a video claiming to show cruise missiles being launched into Ukraine from a submarine of the Black Sea fleet.
Ukraine hopes to evacuate civilians who are holed up in the Azovstal steel plant with the last fighters defending the southern city of Mariupol. “An operation is planned today to get civilians out of the plant,” Zelenskiy’s office said, without giving details.
A checkpoint at the Russian village of Krupets in the Kursk region came under fire, according to Kursk’s governor, Roman Starovoyt.
Russian gains in Donbas have come at a “significant cost” to its forces, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence report.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is investigating a report that a missile had flown directly over a nuclear power station, adding it would be “extremely serious” if true.
The US president, Joe Biden, called for a $33bn package of military and economic aid to Ukraine, more than doubling the level of US assistance to date.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, who is often seen to be voicing the Kremlin’s views, accused the US of seeking to profit from the war while indebting future generations of Ukrainians.
A British citizen has been killed in Ukraine and a second is missing, the Foreign Office has confirmed, amid reports that both were volunteer fighters. The Briton who died was understood to be Scott Sibley, a former soldier who had served in Iraq.
The UK will send 8,000 soldiers to eastern Europe on expanded exercises to combat Russian aggression, in one of the largest deployments since the cold war.
The UK is also sending experts to help Ukraine with gathering evidence and prosecuting war crimes, with a team expected to arrive in Poland in early May.
