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A day after Moscow accused Ukraine of being responsible for a fatal explosion on the bridge connecting Russia’s Crimea to Ukraine, a series of loud explosions shook Kyiv early on Monday.
Around 8:15 a.m. local time (05:15 a.m. GMT), explosions erupted in Kyiv; an AFP reporter in the city observed a large number of ambulances moving toward the incident site.
Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko posted on social media, “Several explosions in the Shevchenkivskyi neighbourhood — in the centre of the capital.”
Social media videos displayed the city’s various neighbourhoods being surrounded by black smoke.
The most recent Russian attack against Kiev happened on June 26.
The explosions happened a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of being to blame for an explosion that killed three people on a bridge between Russia and Crimea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the bombing of the Crimea bridge on Saturday as a “terrorist crime” and stated that the Ukrainian secret services were the “writers, perpetrators, and sponsors.”
Russian news outlets stated that Vladimir Putin was speaking while in a meeting with the chairman of the inquiry committee he has established to examine into the bombing.
According to the Kremlin, the Russian president is preparing for a meeting with his Security Council later on Monday.
The president will meet with the permanent members of the Security Council tomorrow, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
On social media, Ukrainians and others rejoiced over the explosion that destroyed the bridge.
However, neither the incident nor the actions of Kyiv authorities have been specifically blamed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his nightly speech on Saturday.
As a symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 takeover of Crimea, Russia said on Saturday that some rail and road traffic has resumed over the key link.
A crucial supply route connecting Russia with the annexation of the Crimean peninsula is the 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge.
Some military analysts claim that the explosion might have a significant influence if Moscow feels the need to send soldiers from other regions to the Crimea, where they are already stretched thin, or if it causes a stampede of occupants to flee.
Even if Kyiv wasn’t responsible for the explosion, it marked “a tremendous influence operation win for Ukraine,” according to Mick Ryan, a retired Australian senior officer who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
He wrote on Twitter that the incident was “a demonstration to Russians and the rest of the world that Russia’s military cannot secure any of the provinces it recently acquired.”
“Meritorious strikes”
In the meantime, President Zelensky condemned the most recent tragic bombardment of the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, which claimed the lives of at least 13 people, including one child, on Sunday.
According to a statement from the president’s office, 89 people were also injured in the incident, including 11 children.
As “total wickedness” committed by “savages and terrorists,” Volodymyr Zelensky referred to the “merciless strikes on peaceful individuals” and residential structures.
Oleksandr Starukh, a representative of the area, shared images of severely damaged apartment buildings on Telegram and announced the start of a rescue effort to locate people buried beneath the debris.
Officials from Russia, meantime, condemned what they described as a recent uptick in Ukrainian fire into their territory on Sunday, which they claimed had hit residences, office buildings, and a monastery.
The border security agency of Russia, or FBS, stated on Sunday that there have been a significant increase in Ukrainian armed formation attacks on Russian border territory since the beginning of October.
The statement stated that homes and office buildings had been hit by more than a hundred artillery rounds, mostly targeting the western border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk.
Five people were hurt in the attacks, and one person died.
