As the United Nations Chief Antonio Gueterres set to visits, the Ukraine, Russia again attacks capital Kyiv on Thursday. 10 people were injured in the very first rocket attack since mid-April.
A loud sound of blast was heard in Ukraine capital city at around 1715 GMT, that brought emergency help vehicles towards the Western area of the city. The attack shocked the UN chief and his team.
The emergency services said one strike hit a 25-storey building, somewhat vandalizing two floors, while media reporters likewise saw a building on fire, with dark smoke filling the air and rescuers.
Twelve fire engines were brought in to put out the blast, with rescuers affirming 10 individuals were injured in the strikes, increasing a prior toll of three.
Vitali Klitschko, the Kyiv mayor said there had been “two hits in the Shevchenkovsky district”, one of which struck “the lower floors of a residential building”.
The UN group were shaken by the assault yet a representative confirmed every one of them were “safe”.
“It is a war zone but it is shocking that it happened close to us,” Saviano Abreu, representative for the UN’s humanitarian office told media, without expressing that they were so close to the main area.
The assault occurred under an hour after Guterres and Volodymyr Zelensky held a joint press conference around 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) from the main area.
“Today, immediately after the end of our talks in Kyiv, Russian missiles flew into the city. Five rockets,” said the Ukrainian Prime Minister.
“This says a lot… about the Russian leadership’s efforts to humiliate the UN and everything that the organisation represents.”
He also said that it needed “a correspondingly powerful reaction”.
Dmytro Kuleba, his foreign minister decried it as a “heinous act of barbarism” while Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said it was “an attack on the security of the Secretary General and on world security”.
The strikes came only two days after Guterres held talks in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, the Russian chief letting him know he stayed confident that dealings could end the contention.
The incongruity of the timing was not lost on Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior Zelensky associate.
“Missile strikes in the downtown of Kyiv during the official visit of @antonioguterres. The day before he was sitting at a long table in the Kremlin, and today explosions are above his head,” he said in a tweet.
Prior, on his first visit to Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, Guterres visited a few villages and towns close to Kyiv where Russian powers are blamed for killing civilians.
“War is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil,” he had said subsequent to visiting places including Bucha where many bodies for civilians’ garments were found, some with their hands bound and others covered in shallow graves.
Later at the prede conference with Zelensky, Guterres accepter the Security Council had failed to go far enough in its endeavors to “prevent and end” Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.
“Let me be very clear: the Security Council failed to do everything in its power to prevent and end this war. And this is the source of great disappointment, frustration and anger,” he also said.
