(Vyshneve) A factory in the Kyiv region, manufacturing Neptune missiles that the Ukrainian army said it used to hit the Russian cruiser Moskva, was hit overnight by a Russian strike, journalists from the AFP on site.
Posted at 7:23 a.m.
A factory workshop and an administrative building adjoining it, located in the town of Vyshnevé, about thirty kilometers south-west of the Ukrainian capital, were seriously damaged, AFP was able to see. About fifty vehicles parked in the nearby parking lot also had their windows blown out.
The spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense had announced a little earlier that Russia had destroyed a surface-to-air missile production workshop at this factory, named Vizar, using a Kalibr cruise missile.
“Around 1:30 a.m., my guard called me to report strikes,” Andriï Sizov, 47, who runs a woodworking workshop about 100 meters from this factory, told AFP. “There were five. My employee was in the office, he was knocked to the ground by the explosion,” he said.
“For me, they are making us pay for the destruction of the Moskva “, he said, in a reference to the Thursday sinking of the cruiser Moskvathe flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PHOTO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
The Russian Cruiser Moskva
The governor of the Odessa region, Maxime Martchenko, said overnight from Wednesday to Thursday that Neptune missiles had been used by the Ukrainian army to strike the Moskva.
The Vizar factory is one of the Ukrainian factories that manufactures these missiles, according to UkrOboronProm, the state holding company that oversees Ukrainian arms factories.
Moscow has so far not confirmed this explanation for the sinking, simply saying that a fire broke out on board the 186-meter-long missile ship, detonating ammunition. The cruiser then sank during an attempt to tow it to the nearest port.