Russia fires hypersonic missile as Ukraine decries more war dead

Russia says it has used a hypersonic missile for the first time, since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine, as Kiev reports further casualties in Russian attacks on the country.

The Defence Ministry announced the use of the new missile type on Saturday, potentially marking a new escalation in the assault on its neighbour.

Moscow said the “Kinzhal” or “Dagger” – air-to-surface missile destroyed an underground ammunition depot in south-western Ukraine on Friday.

The attack in the Ivano-Frankivsk region also marks the missile’s first-ever deployment in combat, the ministry said. So far, Kinzhal missiles have been used mainly during manoeuvres, most recently a few days before the invasion started on 24 February.

The missiles are fired from MiG-31 fighter jets and, according to Russia, can hit targets up to 2,000 kilometres away. Hypersonic missiles exceed the speed of sound several times over and fly at more than 6,000 kilometres per hour.

So far, there has been no comment from the Ukrainian government and Moscow’s claim could not be independently verified.

Moscow accused Kiev late Saturday, of planning a false-flag attack on facilities for Western diplomats in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, claimed that the Ukrainian leadership intended to portray attacks on diplomatic sites of the United States and other Western countries as a “targeted attack by Russian armed forces.”

This would put pressure on NATO to provide more arms deliveries, and to agree to a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Later, Moscow also said that Kiev was planning chemical attacks on civilians in the Sumy and Mykolaiv regions.

There was no evidence to back up these claims. Ukraine repeatedly accuses Russia of spreading misinformation about alleged provocations in order to justify Moscow’s own attacks.

Fighting and shelling continued across Ukraine this weekend.

After a Russian rocket attack on a barracks in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, helpers recovered at least 50 bodies from the rubble on Saturday.

A total of around 200 soldiers had been sleeping in the building when the missiles struck, the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper reported, adding that nearly 60 wounded people were taken to surrounding hospitals.

Mayor Olexander Senkevich, said the attack on Friday had come from close proximity to Mykolayiv so it had not been possible to sound the alarm in time.

The information on the number of victims could not be independently verified.

The mayor of Chernihiv said on Saturday, that his northern Ukrainian city, which is encircled by Russian troops, was experiencing a humanitarian disaster.

“Indiscriminate artillery shelling of residential areas continues, killing peaceful people,” Vladislav Atrashenko said, according to the UNIAN news agency.

“There is no electricity, no water, no heating. The city’s infrastructure is completely destroyed.”

The city hospital has also been repeatedly shelled, which is why medical care has collapsed, Atrashenko said. In his appeal, he said that no escape corridor had yet been established for the city’s 300,000 inhabitants.

Elsewhere, seven civilians were killed by shelling on Friday in the town of Bucha north-west of the capital Kiev, police in the region said.

And in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, local police said dozens of people were killed and injured in attacks on Friday.

In the central city of Zaporizhzhia, residents have been placed under a curfew lasting a day and a half, until 6 am (0400 GMT) on Monday. The city’s railway station has also halted train traffic until that time, Ukraine’s national rail operator said.

In recent days, many people have fled to Zaporizhzhia from other parts of the country, including Mariupol.

The Zaporizhzhia curfew follows a similar measure in Kiev earlier in the week.

According to city mayor Vitali Klitschko, Kiev has now recorded more than 200 civilians killed. About 2 million residents remained in the city, he said.

At least 260 civilians have meanwhile been killed in the Kharkiv area since fighting began, local judicial authorities said.

Ten escape corridors were set up for Ukrainians desperate to flee contested areas, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday.

Kiev and Moscow later both reported the evacuation of thousands of civilians from embattled areas of Ukraine.

Over 4,100 people were flown out of the port city of Mariupol, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office. Almost 2,500 others were brought to safety from the regions of Kiev and Luhansk via so-called escape corridors.

The Russian side said that almost 16,400 people had been evacuated to Russia from Ukraine’s self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as from other parts of the country.

The Defence Ministry in Moscow also said that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had expressed their wish to be able to flee to Russia.

The Mariupol city council, on the other hand, accused Moscow of bringing thousands of civilians, women and children in particular, to Russia against their will.

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Saturday claimed 14,000 Russians have died in the war.

The Ukrainian leader delivered a grim message to the Russian people a day after Russian President, Vladimir Putin, held a massive pro-war rally at a Moscow stadium, in which the crowd waved Russian flags and chanted “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Zelensky said the 100,000 people in front of the stadium, along with 95,000 that were in the arena itself, corresponded to around the number of Russian soldiers who had entered Ukraine, Zelensky said on Saturday morning in a video message.

“And now imagine 14,000 corpses in this stadium, in addition to tens of thousands more wounded and maimed people,” he said, referring to Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses since the war began.

Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council decided to ban the work of 11 political parties considered pro-Russia, eurosceptic or anti-liberal on Saturday, Zelensky announced.

Meanwhile, Belarusian rail workers reportedly halted train connections between Ukraine and Belarus. Ukrainian Railways chief Oleksander Kamyshin said there was no rail traffic between the two countries and thanked the Belarusian workers, the UNIAN agency reported. He said this would stop Russian troops in Ukraine from receiving reinforcements or supplies via those routes.