4 people were killed in a World Heritage site in Kyiv after Vladimir Putin launched a wave of missiles in an enormous aerial attack.
Five rescuers were killed, and 20 were injured after strikes set apartment buildings ablaze and sparked a hearth at one in every of the country’s most important religious landmarks.
Damage on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a monastery, was substantial, and a serious fire had broken out, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said.
He accused Russia of deliberately striking ‘the guts of one in every of the biggest Christian shrines’.
The rescuers were killed in Kharkiv by a second Russian strike as they fought a blaze attributable to an earlier attack, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.
The central Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery was founded in 1051 and is a recognisable landmark in Kyiv, with its domed gold cathedrals.
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Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said: ‘A brutal assault on our people and our heritage. That is the true face of Russia’s Orthodox values.’
The Lavra was previously damaged during World War Two in an enormous explosion on November 3, 1941, when Kyiv was under German occupation.
The attacks last night are the worst since earlier in June, when a missile attack killed almost two dozen Ukrainians and wounded 100 others.
Ukraine said it’s working with UNESCO to make sure ‘immediate and adequate responses to this state barbarism’.
Putin’s forces appeared to focus on key cultural sites of their latest onslaught. Also struck was the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio, which holds the biggest and oldest costume collection in Ukraine.
Kharkiv Art Museum and opera theatre were hit, as was the historic House of Organ and Chamber Music in Dnipro.
Olena Kurylo, 56, from Kharkiv, said today: ‘The Russians are striking out of some sort of impotence, hitting museums, theatres, churches.
‘Where is their ‘God is with us’ now? Striking the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra? Where is God with them? They’ve the devil with them, Devil! May all of them burn in hell.’
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