Russia bombs Ukrainian rocket factory in Kyiv after warship sinks

Russia has lashed out after the sinking of its warship, launching a large scale attack on Kyiv for the first time in more than two weeks.

Russia pounded a Ukrainian rocket factory after losing an iconic warship in the Black Sea, as the Pentagon on Friday backed Kyiv’s claim to have sunk the Moskva with cruise missiles.

The Vizar plant, near the capital’s international airport, was seriously damaged in the overnight strikes, an AFP journalist saw.

The AFP also witnessed the aftermath of several strikes on Friday in the industrial district of Kharkiv — just 22 kilometres from the Russian border. Authorities said 10 people were killed and 35 injured as a result of Russian shelling in the district.

It comes as the head of Kyiv’s regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said the bodies of more than 900 civilians “killed at the hands of the Russian army” were found following Russia’s withdrawal from the area, ABC is reporting.

Around 95 per cent died from gunshot wounds according to police data, with the largest number of victims found in Bucha, where 350 bodies were recovered.

“Consequently, we understand that under the [Russian] occupation, people were simply executed in the streets,” Mr Nebytov said.

Two mass grave have been discovered in Bucha and he claimed Russian troops had been “tracking down” people with strong pro-Ukrainian views.

Ukraine’s national police are investigating more than 3000 war crimes allegedly committed by Russia forces in Kyiv.

Stream the world’s best correspondents on the ground as the crisis in Ukraine unfolds with Flash. 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free. Offer ends October 31, 2022 >

Members of the exhumation team work on a mass grave on April 14, 2022 in Bucha, Ukraine. Picture: Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

The most recent figure from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states a total of 1982 people have been killed in Ukraine and 2651 injured.

Meanwhile Russia said it had used sea-based long-range missiles to hit the factory in Kyiv, which Ukraine’s state weapons manufacturer says produced Neptune cruise missiles.

“There were five hits. My employee was in the office and got thrown off his feet by the blast,” Andrei Sizov, a 47-year-old owner of a nearby wood workshop, told AFP.

“They are making us pay for destroying the Moskva,” he said. It was the first major Russian strike around the Ukrainian capital in over two weeks.

A Pentagon official briefing reporters said Ukraine had hit the Moskva with two Neptunes — contradicting Russia’s claim that the ship lost balance in rough seas as it was towed to port after ammunition exploded.

People stand beside damaged buildings at the Vizar company military-industrial complex, after the site was hit by overnight Russian strikes, in the town of Vyshneve, southwestern suburbs of Kyiv, on April 15, 2022. Picture: Fadel Senna/AFP

Women clean in a building with a collapsed facade at Vizar. Picture: Fadel Senna/AFP

The Moskva had been leading Russia’s naval effort in the seven-week conflict, and the fate of its crew of over 500 was uncertain.

The Pentagon official said survivors were observed being recovered by other Russian vessels, but Ukraine authorities said bad weather had made rescue operations impossible.

The Russian fleet in the Black Sea has been blockading the besieged port city of Mariupol, where Russian officials say they are in full control although Ukrainian fighters are still holed up in the city’s fortress-like steelworks.

In eastern Ukraine, civilians say they have “no rest” from bombardment, including in Severodonetsk, the last easterly city still held by Ukrainian forces.

Now little more than a ghost town, the settlement just kilometres from the front line has already buried 400 civilians, according to Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday.

“There’s no electricity, no water,” Maria, who lives with her husband and mother-in-law, told AFP amid a din of shelling that she said never stops. “But I prefer to stay here, at home. If we leave, where will we go?”

Nuclear threat

In the capital, Kyiv regional governor Oleksandr Pavliuk said there were at least two other Russian strikes on the city Friday, adding civilians thinking about returning should “wait for quieter times”.
Russian forces last month started withdrawing from around Kyiv as they were redeployed to focus on the east of the country, but the city remains vulnerable to missile strikes.

“The number and scale of missile strikes against targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or sabotage committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime on Russian territory,” Russia’s defence ministry vowed.

The Russian warship Moskva was sunk.

President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Friday that Russia could even use nuclear weapons out of desperation as its invasion falters, echoing recent comments by CIA director William Burns.

“They could do it, I mean they can,” Zelensky told CNN. “For them, life of the people is nothing.”

Burns said that Russia’s battlefield setbacks raised the risk that President Vladimir Putin could deploy a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon to try to regain the initiative.

In their latest move, Russia on Friday alleged Ukraine was preparing a missile strike to hit its own refugees at a railway station in the town of Lozova in the eastern region of Kharkiv.

The allegations echoed Russia’s widely-dismissed claim that Kyiv was responsible for a missile strike on April 18 that killed scored at another railway station.

People rest in Taras Shevchenko park in central Kyiv on April 15. Picture: Genya Savilov/AFP

In Kharkiv, Russian strikes killed at least seven, including a child, the region’s governor said Friday, as Moscow’s forces stepped up attacks in the region.

Outside the city, the village of Borova came under the control of Russian troops and the local administration had to flee, village mayor Alexander Tertychny said on Facebook.

Ukrainian authorities have been urging people in the south and the Donbas area in the east to quickly move west in advance of a large-scale Russian offensive.

Seizing the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists control the Donetsk and Lugansk areas, would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the occupied Crimean peninsula.

‘Starved to death’

As the war grinds on, the UN’s World Food Programme appealed for access to desperate Ukrainians trapped in war zones including Mariupol.

“It’s one thing when people are suffering from the devastation of war. It’s another thing when they’re being starved to death,” WFP director David Beasley said in a statement.

Moscow, which invaded Ukraine partly because of deepening ties between Kyiv and NATO, on Friday warned of consequences should Finland and Sweden join the US-led defence alliance.

The two countries are considering joining NATO after Russia’s devastating move into neighbouring Ukraine.

“They will automatically find themselves on the NATO frontline,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Shortly afterwards, Finland’s European Affairs Minister Tytti Tuppurainen said it was “highly likely” that her country would apply for NATO membership.

“The people of Finland, they seem to have already made up their mind and there is a huge majority for the NATO membership,” she told Britain’s Sky News.

Unlike Sweden, Finland neighbours Russia, from which it declared independence in 1917 after 150 years of Russian rule.

Moscow on Thursday accused Ukraine of sending helicopters to bomb a village in Russia’s Bryansk region — not far from the border with Ukraine — injuring eight people.

Kyiv denied the helicopter attack, instead accusing Russia of staging the incidents to stir up “anti-Ukrainian hysteria” in the country.