The Dormition Cathedral [Source: BBC News]
Nine people have been killed and several others injured in a wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine during which a major religious landmark in Kyiv caught fire, reports say.
Four people were killed in attacks on Kyiv, while five rescue workers died trying to put out a fire caused by a Russian strike on the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.
The 11th-century Dormition Cathedral was significantly damaged in what Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko called a “brutal assault on our people and our heritage”.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack in the Russian city of Tula, south of Moscow, killed three people and wounded three others, including a one-year-old, officials said.
Drone and missile strikes set fire to buildings and cars and left more than 140,000 people in Ukraine’s capital without electricity, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Most of Ukraine was under air raid warnings on Monday.
The Kyiv strikes, which targeted several residential buildings, left at least 23 people wounded, while five others were wounded in Kharkiv.
“We will be urgently initiating all relevant procedures within UNESCO and all other international mechanisms, demanding immediate and adequate responses to this state barbarism,” Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Andrii Sybiha said in a statement on X, referring to the Cathedral in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery.
Ukraine’s neighbour, Poland, said its scrambled fighter jets and placed ground-based air defence systems on alert in a “preventive” response to Russian strikes in Kyiv.
The strikes come ahead of a G7 meeting this week in France, where the war in Ukraine is on the agenda.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken with US President Donald Trump about efforts to end the long-running conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
