TheCable

A series of explosions have rocked Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in what appears to be the result of Russian missile strikes.

On Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials reported attacks on critical infrastructure in Kyiv, adding that emergency services were operating at the scene.

According to ABC News, Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, said fragments of a missile fell on a non-residential area in the Holosiivskyi district which led to a fire outbreak in the building.

No casualties have been reported so far.

The Ukrainian capital hasn’t been attacked with missiles since the night of January 1.

The attack comes hours after Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv’s governor, said two Russian missiles hit the region’s industrial district.

The strikes targeted “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (outlying) region,” ABC News quoted Syniehubov as saying.

Although no casualties have been reported, the governor said emergency power cuts in the city and other settlements of the region were possible.

The development comes a day after Russia claimed victory in Soledar, a salt mining town in Ukraine’s embattled east.

On Friday, the Russian defence ministry claimed that its forces had wrested control of the town after “constant bombardment of the enemy by assault and army aviation, missile forces and artillery of a grouping of Russian forces”.

Control of Soledar would allow Russia closer access to Bakhmut, an important transport hub where lots of supply lines go through, and which the Kremlin has since earmarked as a bigger prize.

So far, Russia has annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, said Kyiv’s forces continue to fight Russian troops for control of Soledar.