Russia fires hypersonic missiles for second time

LVIV • Air raid sirens sounded across Ukrainian cities yesterday and Russia's Defence Ministry said cruise missiles were launched from ships in the southern Black Sea and south-eastern Caspian Sea, as well as hypersonic missiles from the airspace of Crimea in the south.

The hypersonic missiles travel faster than five times the speed of sound and their speed, manoeuvrability and altitude make them difficult to track and intercept.

The missiles were deployed by Russia for the first time in Ukraine on Saturday, Russia's Interfax news agency reported, in a strike which Moscow said destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in western Ukraine close to the border with Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance.

Yesterday, Russia's Defence Ministry said Moscow had again fired its newest Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile, destroying a fuel storage site in the southern Mykolaiv region, near the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in the besieged south-eastern port of Mariupol yesterday, with the Ukrainian authorities saying that Russia had bombed an art school sheltering 400 people, mainly women, children and the elderly.

And in the encircled northern city of Chernihiv, the mayor said yesterday that a hospital had been hit in the latest shelling, killing dozens of civilians. Russia has denied targeting civilians.

Separately, city authorities said some residents of Mariupol were being forcibly taken to Russia and stripped of their Ukrainian passports. "The occupiers are sending the residents of Mariupol to filtration camps, checking their phones and seizing (their) Ukrainian documents," Donetsk regional administration chief Pavlo Kyrylenko said, adding that more than 1,000 Mariupol residents had been deported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the siege of Mariupol - a strategic, mostly Russian-speaking port where utilities and communications have been cut for days - was "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come".

The capture of Mariupol would link Crimea, which Russia occupied in 2014, with the separatist eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, both of which broke away the same year and are controlled by Moscow-backed rebels.

Yesterday, Mr Zelensky's office said Ukraine sees a high risk of an attack launched from Belarus - Russia's close ally - on the western Volyn region, which lies to the north of the city of Lviv. It was not immediately clear whether Ukraine saw such an attack coming from Russian or Belarusian forces.

Meanwhile, humanitarian conditions continued to deteriorate in the mostly Russian-speaking south and east of the country, as well as in the north around the capital Kyiv. Aid agencies have warned that they are struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of people trapped by the Russian forces.

More than 3.3 million refugees, mainly women and children, have fled Ukraine since the war began on Feb 24, said the United Nations refugee agency. Another 6.5 million are thought to be displaced inside the country. Ukraine has a population of about 44 million people.

Its military has put up an unexpected and fierce resistance that has stalled Russia's forces outside Kyiv and several other cities.

In an intelligence update yesterday, Britain's Defence Ministry said Russia "had increased its indiscriminate shelling of urban areas, resulting in widespread destruction and large numbers of civilian casualties" after limited progress in capturing several cities.

In an address to Israeli lawmakers yesterday, Mr Zelensky urged Israel to abandon its effort to maintain neutrality following Russia's invasion, saying the time had come for the Jewish state to firmly back his country. He had spoken to several foreign legislatures, including the United States Congress, Britain's House of Commons and Germany's Bundestag.

Yesterday, Mr Zelensky renewed his plea for talks with President Vladimir Putin. "I'm ready for negotiations with him," Mr Zelensky told the CNN show, Fareed Zakaria GPS. "I think without negotiations we cannot end this war."

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE