Seoul Gazette - Kyiv hit with deadly strikes after attack on Russian e-commerce giant

The latest bombardment highlights a dual challenge for Ukraine in its fifth year of war, facing almost daily Russian attacks alongside rare domestic political instability triggered by a sudden wartime shakeup of its military leadership.

AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions moments after the Ukrainian air force warned residents via Telegram of incoming ballistic missiles.

One of the explosions was so powerful it set off alarms of cars parked in the city centre, an AFP journalist said.

Ukraine's state emergency services said on Telegram that one person was killed and 13 others wounded in the attack that police said had targeted six districts.

According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and local authorities, an apartment building in the Solomianskyi district was hit and a fire broke out at a supermarket, while a house was ablaze in the Sviatoshynsky district.

Strikes were also reported at a shopping and entertainment centre in the Dniprovsky district, an apartment building in the Shevchenkivsky district and a non-residential building.

In Dnipropetrovsk, the central region that borders the frontline, Russian drone strikes killed one person, regional official Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram.

On the Russian side, a Ukrainian strike killed one person in the Kursk region, which is near the frontline, regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram.

Russia has been firing drones and missiles at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities almost daily since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

- Attacks inside Russia -

On Saturday, Ukraine sent attack drones to destroy e-commerce warehouses in the Moscow and Tambov regions, killing eight people and causing major fires.

In Ukraine, Russian strikes killed five people and wounded almost 20 others in regions stretching the country's southeast Saturday.

"In response to Russian strikes on our civilian infrastructure and on our cities and communities, two major logistics facilities were hit -- in the Moscow and Tambov regions," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said on X.

He alleged the centres were used "to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment".

Kyiv has in recent months intensified its strikes on Russian territory, disrupting the lives of ordinary Russians -- strikes it calls retribution for more than four years of bombardments against its territory.

The campaign, which Kyiv calls "long-range sanctions", has mostly targeted Russia's oil infrastructure triggering a full-blown fuel crisis in one of the world's biggest oil-producing countries.

More than 370 drones were launched toward the Moscow region overnight, said the mayor of the Russian capital, Sergei Sobyanin.

Between July 11 and 18, almost 1,892 Ukrainian drones heading towards Moscow were intercepted, he added.

- Rare wartime protests -

But even as the war raged, in big cities across Ukraine, thousands gathered for a third day in a row to protest on Saturday the removal of popular defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

The tech-savvy minister was ousted by Zelensky in a surprise government reshuffle just as Ukraine appeared to be gaining momentum on the battlefield, triggering a rare public backlash.

The demonstrations came as the president held two days of meetings with top military commanders, fuelling media speculation he could be looking for a replacement for army chief Oleksandr Syrsky.

During his barely six months in office, Fedorov had repeatedly argued with Syrsky, 60, in his efforts to digitise and modernise an army strained by four and a half years of fighting.

M.Joo--SG