Russian strikes hit 20 Kyiv homes, Qatar embassy amid freezing winter, Zelensky says

KYIV, Jan 9 — A “massive” Russian night-time attack on Ukraine damaged 20 residential buildings in Kyiv and its suburbs, as well as Qatar’s embassy, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.

Russia hit Ukraine as temperatures plunged to freezing with its latest barrage of missiles — including the hypersonic Oreshnik — as Moscow rejected Western proposals to end its almost four-year invasion.

Kyiv was the worst hit in the strikes, Ukraine said, with four people killed and at least 25 wounded.

“Twenty residential buildings alone were damaged,” Zelensky said, adding that “a building of the Embassy of Qatar was damaged last night by a Russian drone”.

“Qatar, a state that does so much to mediate with Russia in order to secure the release of prisoners of war and civilians held in Russian prisons,” he said.

Zelensky said Russia attacked with 13 ballistic missiles, including the Oreshnik, and 22 cruise missiles, while also launching 242 drones on Ukraine.

Russian military bloggers said the Oreshnik missile was used to hit a major gas depot in the Lviv region in western Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader said an ambulance worker was among those killed in Kyiv in a double-tap attack.

“There was a second strike on one of the residential buildings — precisely at the moment when first responders were providing assistance after the first strike,” he said.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Russia “repeatedly struck a high-rise building at a time when rescuers and medics were working on site” in what he called a “deliberate attack on the emergency services.”

He said the capital and the surrounding region “suffered the most” and that 20 other non-residential buildings in Kyiv were also damaged.

“Almost all districts in the Kyiv region were under enemy attack,” Klymenko said.

Russia’s strikes hit as temperatures in Ukraine dipped to below -10C and left tens of thousands without power.

“The enemy’s inhuman goal is to leave millions of people without light, heat and water in the middle of a freezing winter,” Klymenko said. — AFP