Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the western region of Lviv came under a “massive” Russian air attack early Sunday as its military reports striking two Russian naval ships stationed at the annexed peninsula of Crimea.
“Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not leave shelters,” Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on Telegram early Sunday.
The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said the Stryi district, south of the city of Lviv, around 80 kilometers from the Polish border, was also attacked.
Officials in Kyiv, the surrounding Kyiv region and Lviv reported minor damage to some buildings but no casualties.
Temporary localized power cuts were also reported in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region after an overnight drone attack.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired 29 cruise missiles and 28 drones at its territory overnight.
It said it had downed 18 of the missiles and 25 drones.
Missile barrage
Kyiv has promised to retaliate to Moscow’s strikes by taking the fighting to Russian soil.
Late on Saturday, Moscow said it had repelled a barrage of Ukrainian missiles fired at the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Sevastopol’s Moscow-appointed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said rocket fragments had killed a 65-year-old resident, and four other people had been wounded.
Footage shared on social media showed a large blast in the city, sending a fireball and plume of black smoke into the air, as well as what appeared to be Russian air defenses intercepting incoming projectiles.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces successfully struck the amphibious landing ships Yamal and Azov, a communications center, and a number of the Black Sea Fleet’s infrastructure sites,” the Ukrainian armed forces’ strategic communications center also said Sunday.
Moscow-installed officials on the peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014, said their forces had repelled a major Ukrainian aerial attack late Saturday night.
Stray rocket
Poland said Sunday that it would demand an explanation from Moscow after a Russian cruise missile fired at towns in western Ukraine breached Polish airspace overnight.
Poland said the missile was part of a Russian bombardment of targets in Ukraine as Moscow steps up its attacks on its western neighbor.
Following a “massive attack” on Ukraine by Russia, Poland activated “all air defense systems, all air force systems,” the country’s Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
The army said the missile, which was traveling at almost 800 kilometers per hour around 400 meters above the ground, had crossed about two kilometers over the border into Poland.
“The object flew through Polish airspace above the village of Oserdow (Lublin province) and stayed for 39 seconds,” the statement from the army said, adding that it was tracked by military radar throughout its flight.
Terror video
A video apparently shot by gunmen who carried out the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall has been posted on social media accounts typically used by the jihadist group Islamic State, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
The video, which lasts a minute and a half, shows several individuals with blurred faces and garbled voices, armed with assault rifles and knives.
They appear to be the lobby of the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Krasnogorsk, northwest of the Russian capital.
The attackers fire several bursts of gunfire, numerous inert bodies are strewn about and a fire can be seen starting in the background.
The video appeared on a Telegram account considered, according to the SITE monitoring group, to belong to Amaq, the news arm of IS.
The attack, for which IS claimed responsibility on Friday evening, killed at least 133 people.
“The whole country is in mourning with those who lost their loved ones in this inhumane tragedy,” public television channel Russia 24 said on Sunday morning.