Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said there were dead and wounded in blasts that rocked cities across Ukraine on October 10 in what appeared to be revenge strikes after Moscow blamed an explosion on the bridge linking Russia with illegally annexed to Crimea on Ukrainian “terrorists.”
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was shaken by a wave of explosions, with the emergency services saying that a number of people were killed and wounded in the blasts.
Authorities said that the attacks on Kyiv have left at least five people dead and 12 wounded.
“At this stage, the death of five and the injury of 12 Kyiv residents are confirmed,” Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on his Telegram channel.
Reports of explosions also came from other Ukrainian cities — Dnipro, Lviv, and Ternopil — according to Ukrainian media.
“They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth…destroy our people who are sleeping at home in [the city of] Zaporizhzhya. Kill people who go to work in Dnipro and Kyiv,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The air raid sirens do not subside throughout Ukraine. There are missiles hitting. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded.”
The commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, said on Twitter that Russia used drones to launch a total of 75 rockets on Ukraine, more than half of which were destroyed by Ukrainian air defense.
“The terrorist country carried out missile and air strikes on [our] territory, using attack UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). This morning, 75 rockets were launched, 41 of them were neutralized by our air defense,” Zaluzhniy said adding that the attack was still ongoing and urging people to remain in shelters.
“Cowards fighting playgrounds, children and people,” Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential administration, wrote on social media. “This is another signal to the civilized world that the Russian question must be solved by force.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it would seek revenge for the strikes.
“There is sacrifice amongst people and destruction,” the ministry said on its Facebook page. “The enemy will be punished for the pain and death brought upon our land! We will get our revenge!”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said missiles hit “critical infrastructure” in the capital.
The governor of Ukraine’s western region of Lviv said bombardments targeted critical infrastructure, including energy facilities, across the region.
“Strikes on energy infrastructure facilities in the Lviv region have been recorded,” the governor, Maxim Kozytski, said in a statement on Telegram, calling on residents to stay indoors.
Zelenskiy said earlier that Russia’s latest attack on civilian targets in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya that killed 14 people and left scores wounded, including children, was an act of “terrorism at state level,” which proved that it is impossible to negotiate with Russia.
Zelenskiy’s statement came shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin himself blamed Ukrainian intelligence for the recent attack on the 18-kilometer bridge linking Moscow-annexed Crimea with mainland Russia, calling it an “act of terrorism.”
“The constant terrorism against the civilian population is Russia’s obvious rejection of real negotiations,”Zelenskiy said in a video message late on October 9. “Terrorism at the state level is one of the worst international crimes.”
The strikes across Ukraine came after Russian President Vladimir Putin himself blamed Ukrainian intelligence, without providing any evidence, for the recent attack on the 18-kilometer-long bridge linking Moscow-annexed Crimea with mainland Russia, calling it an “act of terrorism.”
Ukrainian officials in Zaporizhzhya said that nine rockets fired by Russian forces overnight on October 8-9 killed 14 people in two apartment buildings and dozens of private homes and wounded 70, including 11 children.
Fresh Russian shelling of Zaporizhzhya the following night destroyed an apartment building, causing injuries, regional Governor Oleksandr Starukh said early on October 10.
The nearby Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is located southwest of the city in territory Moscow seized early in the war.
“It was a deliberate blow. The one who gave the order and those who carried it out knew where to hit,” Zelenskiy said in his video message.
Russian forces also shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv overnight, launching 10 S-300 missiles, said the head of Mykolayiv’s regional military administration, Vitaliy Kim.
However, Kim wrote on telegram that “according to preliminary data, there were no victims.”
Ukrainian forces have continued to make gains in a weeks-long counteroffensive in the south and northeast that has led Russian forces to retreat in many areas.
Natalya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military command said on October 9 that “as of today, from the beginning of the counteroffensive, over 1,170 square kilometers have been liberated in the Kherson direction.”
“Work is continuing on consolidation of territory, clearing it, and conducting stabilizing operations, as the settlements we enter contain many surprises left by the occupiers,” she told Ukrainian TV.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence update on October 10 that “Ukrainian forces “continue to place pressure on Russian forces both in the northeast and in Kherson Oblast in the south.”
However, British intelligence said that Moscow continues to prioritize its operations in eastern Ukraine, mainly around Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, where Russian forces were coming closer to breaking into the city, which has sustained very extensive damage from bombardment.
Russian losses have continued after Moscow announced last month that it was annexing the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, and Luhansk partially held by Russian forces.
On October 8, Russia-imposed authorities in the Kherson region said they were facing “a difficult period” and authorized a partial evacuation in the face of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
After what Russian officials called a truck bombing took out one lane of the highway section of the Crimea Bridge and damaged the rail section, Moscow made changes to the command of its war effort in Ukraine and the security of key infrastructure in Crimea, with Putin putting the FSB — the successor to the Soviet-era KGB — in charge of the effort.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will chair a meeting with his Security Council in Moscow on October 10.
