Pavel and Čaputová hid in a shelter, the air attacks claimed twenty victims

Ukrainian authorities issued a warning of the risk of air strikes for a large part of the country on Friday afternoon. The presidents of the Czech Republic and Slovakia retired to the hotel shelter, which is located in the hotel’s underground garage.

The forced transition to shelter disrupted the afternoon program of the Czech head of state. That is why Pavlo’s team organized the last Friday working meeting with representatives of the Crimean Tatars in an impromptu manner right in the premises of the shelter. The exiled leaders of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Džemilev and Refat Chubarov, came there for a meeting with the Czech head of state.

After less than an hour, the Ukrainian authorities canceled the alarm in Kyiv. Čaputová left the shelter first. Pavel finished negotiations with the Crimean Tatars and then followed her. According to a Ukrainian application alerting to the risk of airstrikes, the alarm lasted 43 minutes in Kiev early Friday evening.

Sirens sounded in a number of Ukrainian regions, around 17:30 CEST the warning was in effect from the east of Ukraine to Zhytomyr and the Vinnytsia region in the central part of the country. “Do not ignore the warning,” the head of the office of the Ukrainian president, Andriy Yermak, wrote in the afternoon on the social network. Air Force Yuri Ihnat. “Two Tu-95 strategic bombers and two Tu-22M3 long-range rocket bombers took off. The activity of Su-30 and Su-35 fighters was also noted in the north of Ukraine near the front line,” Ihnat said.

Twenty casualties

Early in the morning, Russia launched a series of attacks on targets in many parts of Ukraine, including Kiev. The number of victims of Russian attacks in the Ukrainian cities of Uman and Dnipro is close to two dozen, Ukrainian authorities say. In the city of Dnipro, they claimed two lives and injured three, said Minister of the Interior Ihor Klymenko.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned Russian terror and called on the world to strengthen global sanctions against Russia. This is reported by the media with reference to the Ukrainian authorities.

On the footage from Umana, which lies approximately 200 kilometers south of Kyiv, a seriously damaged residential building can be seen, part of which has collapsed. The rocket destroyed an entire block of houses above one of the entrances, with about 100 people living in that part of the building, Ukrinform reported.

Rescuers on the scene continue to clear the debris, where more bodies have been found. The toll rose to 23 victims, including four children among the dead. Of the 18 injured, 11 are in hospitals. 17 people, including three children, were saved, the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda wrote on its website.

According to Klymenko, the victims of the attack on Dnipro were a three-year-old child and a young woman. Three people were injured. Explosions were also reported from the metropolis of Kyiv and the cities of Kremenchuk, Poltava and Mykolaiv. According to the Ukrainian army, 21 out of 23 Russian missiles with a flat flight path were shot down over the entire country.

Several explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital. According to the AFP agency, local authorities said that air defenses shot down 11 Russian missiles and two drones. However, the attack did not cause any casualties or serious damage in Kyiv. According to the city’s military administration, it was the first air attack on the Ukrainian capital in 51 days.

“There must be a fair response from Ukraine and the world to this Russian terror. And so it happens. Every such attack, every evil committed against our country and people only brings the terrorist state closer to defeat and punishment, and not the other way around, as (the Russians) believe,” President Zelenskyy emphasized, according to the Unian agency.

“(Russian evil) can be stopped with sanctions, global sanctions against Russia must be strengthened,” Zelenskyy declared. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described Russian attacks on peaceful cities as further proof of the necessity to arm Ukraine with American F-16 fighter jets, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.