Explosions rock Kyiv a week after strike

Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko said the Shevchenko district in central Kyiv had been hit and urged residents to evacuate.

Further details were not immediately available.

The blast came from the same center of Kiev where the missile hit a children’s playground and the intersection near the main building of the Kyiv National University a week earlier.

Social media posts clearly showed fires breaking out in the strike area, with black smoke billowing into the early morning light.

Russian forces have attacked Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, wrote in a post on Telegram’s social media site.

Russia has repeatedly used so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power plants.

The attack on Kyiv comes at a time when fighting has recently escalated in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, while Ukrainian counterattacks continue in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhia.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening speech last night that there had been heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region.

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which make up the bulk of the industrial east known as Donbass, were two of the four regions annexed to Russia in September in violation of international law.

On Sunday, the administration of the Russian-backed Donetsk region said Ukraine hit the central administration building.

No casualties were reported.