NurPhoto via Getty ImagesUkraine has hit a Russian chemical plant with Storm Shadow missiles, its military said on Tuesday, referring to the UK-made long-range weapon.
Calling the strike “a successful hit” that penetrated the Russian air defence system, Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces said they were still assessing the outcome of the “massive” strike.
Hours later Russia launched a heavy drone and missile attack on several Ukrainian regions, leaving six people dead, including two children, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Emergency power outages were in place in Kyiv itself as well as the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and reports said Russia had targeted thermal power plants.
Two people were killed in strikes on the capital, and a woman and two children were killed in the wider Kyiv region, officials said.
Meanwhile, Russian authorities have not yet commented on the strike on the Bryansk chemical plant, although it has warned the West not to give Ukraine long-range missiles.
Ukraine’s military said it was imperative to target Russian facilities that play a key role in Moscow’s war against Ukraine: “The Bryansk Chemical Plant is a key facility of the aggressor state’s military-industrial complex”, it said on X.
It added that the plant “produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine”.
The attack came on the same day that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other European leaders vowed to “ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defence industry” until Russian leader Vladimir Putin “is ready to make peace”.
A joint statement – co-signed by the Ukrainian, German, French, Italian, Polish, Danish, Finnish, EU and Norwegian leaders – added that “Ukraine must be in the strongest position – before, during, and after any ceasefire”.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko said on Wednesday that debris from Russia’s overnight strikes had badly damaged a number of buildings in the capital.
The head of the city’s military administration, Timur Tkachenko, said two people died in the capital.
Witnesses heard explosions that sounded like air defence units in operation, the Reuters news agency reported.
The latest attacks came after a meeting at the White House last week between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which the US leader indicated he was not ready to supply sought-after Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv.
Trump initially agreed with Putin to hold talks in Budapest regarding the war in Ukraine, possibly in the coming weeks. But that plan was put on hold on Tuesday, with Trump saying he did not want a “wasted meeting”.
In remarks at the White House, the US president indicated that a key sticking point remained Moscow’s refusal to cease fighting along the current front line.
Just last month, Trump appeared to take a major shift in his position towards ending the war, saying Kyiv could “win all of Ukraine back in its original form” – referring to Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsular Moscow annexed in 2014.
