KYIV, Oct 10 (HRNW) – Russia pounded cities across Ukraine during rush hour on Monday morning, killing civilians and knocking out power and heat, in apparent revenge strikes after President Vladimir Putin declared a blast on Russia’s bridge to Crimea to be a terrorist attack.
Cruise missiles tore into busy intersections, parks and tourist sites in the centre of downtown Kyiv with an intensity unseen even when Russian forces attempted to capture the capital early in the war.
Explosions were also reported in Lviv, Ternopil and Zhytomyr in Ukraine’s west, Dnipro and Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia in the south and Kharkiv in the east.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the rush hour attacks appeared to have been deliberately timed to kill people as well as to knock out electricity.
His prime minister said 11 major infrastructure targets were hit in eight regions, leaving swaths of the country with no power, water or heat.
In Kyiv, the body of a man in jeans lay in a street at a major intersection, surrounded by flaming cars. In a park, a soldier cut through the clothes of a woman who lay in the grass to try to treat her wounds. Two other women were bleeding nearby.
A huge crater gaped next to a children’s playground in a central Kyiv park. The remains of an apparent missile were buried, smoking in the mud.