(Kyiv) Natalia, 72, was awakened on Sunday in Kyiv at 6 a.m. by a series of powerful explosions, the first since the end of April in the Ukrainian capital which was resuming a semblance of normal life in the midst of war with Russia.
Posted at 2:41 p.m.
A freight car repair shop was targeted by airstrikes in southeast Kyiv 10 km from the city center and Russia claimed to have destroyed armored vehicles there supplied to Ukraine by European countries from the east.
“This is another example of falsification fabricated by Russia to justify this brutal war against Ukraine,” reacted to AFP Serhii Leshchenko, deputy director of the supervisory board of the Ukrainian railway company.
In the evening, AFP was able to observe on the spot the destruction of several hangars and a large crater caused by a shell, while firefighters were still trying to control a small fire.
According to the company, nearly 700 employees work on this site of several hectares in normal times.
“I heard about six explosions at 5:57 in the morning,” says Natalia. Former employee of the bombed site, she refuses to give her last name like the other witnesses interviewed by AFP.
According to initial information, the explosions did not cause any deaths. One injured person was hospitalized, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced on Telegram. She quickly left the hospital during the day.
A 10-storey pink building had all its windows smashed. Not far away, a woman cleaned broken glass in the street in front of a cultural center whose windows were also blown by the explosions.
It may “come back”
Léonid, 63, also worked on the bombed site for 45 years. “There’s nothing military about it, but they bomb everything!” “, he protests.
He says he is not afraid for himself because he has “lived his life”, but he is worried about his grandchildren. “We don’t know if it will come back, it’s unpredictable”.
The noose loosened on the Ukrainian capital at the end of March, as Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv region and northern Ukraine to concentrate their efforts on Donbass, in the east of the country, partly controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow.
Nearly two-thirds of Kyiv’s 3.5 million inhabitants have returned to the capital, which had been emptied of most of its inhabitants at the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Vitali Klitschko said on May 10. .
Western embassies that evacuated the capital at the start of the war have also resumed their activities in Kyiv.
The mayor of Kyiv, however, stressed that the authorities could not give security guarantees and several Ukrainian officials stress that Russia has not abandoned the ambition to take Kyiv.
The capital was last hit on April 28, the day of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ visit.
” People are scared ”
On her balcony, a hundred meters from the explosion, Tetiana, 58, shows the many broken windows on her white brick building.
She lives in Poland and came to Kyiv for births around her. When the explosions were heard, everyone went outside, she said.
According to the Ukrainian air force, several cruise missiles were fired at dawn on Sunday in the direction of Kyiv by Russian TU-95 planes based in the Caspian Sea, one of which was destroyed.
Not far away, a home was also damaged with numerous broken windows.
Vassyl, 43, lives there. He brings back two white loaves in a plastic bag. “People are scared now,” he breathes.