(Vyshneve) A factory in the Kyiv region, manufacturing Neptune missiles that the Ukrainian army said it used to hit the Russian cruiser Moskva, was hit overnight by a Russian strike.
Posted at 7:23 a.m.
A factory workshop and an administrative building adjoining it, located in the residential suburb of Vyshnevé, about thirty kilometers south-west of the Ukrainian capital, were seriously damaged. About fifty vehicles parked in the nearby parking lot also had their windows blown out.
PHOTO FADEL SENNA, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
The facade of a building in the complex collapsed after being hit by the Russian strike.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman had earlier announced that Russia had destroyed a missile production plant at the Vizar plant using a Kalibr cruise missile.
“Around 1:30 a.m., my guard called me to report strikes,” Andriï Sizov, 47, who runs a woodworking workshop near the factory, which occupies a plot of land, told AFP. more than two kilometers long. “There were five. My employee was in the office, he was knocked to the ground by the explosion,” he said.
“For me, they are making us pay for the destruction of the Moscow “, he said, in a reference to the Thursday sinking of the cruiser Moscowthe flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PHOTO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
The Russian cruiser Moscow
The governor of the Odessa region, Maxime Martchenko, said overnight from Wednesday to Thursday that Neptune missiles had been used by the Ukrainian army to strike the Moscow.
The Vizar factory is one of the Ukrainian factories that manufacture these missiles, according to UkrOboronProm, the state holding company that oversees Ukrainian arms factories.
Moscow did not confirm this explanation for the sinking, simply saying that a fire broke out on board the 186-meter-long missile ship, detonating ammunition. The cruiser then sank during an attempt to tow it to the nearest port.
According to two workers working near the factory, the strike on the factory caused no casualties. The Ukrainian authorities, however, did not immediately confirm this information or even confirm the strike.
At midday on Friday, cleaning ladies in aprons were hard at work in the partially gutted administrative building, picking up the rubble.
Russian fire on the Kyiv region has decreased since late March, when Moscow withdrew its troops from around the capital, announcing that it wanted to focus its offensive on eastern Ukraine.
Russia, however, threatened Friday to intensify its attacks on Kyiv after accusing Ukraine of bombing villages in Russian territory, close to the Ukrainian border. Charges rejected by Kyiv, which claims that these are “terrorist attacks” fomented by Moscow to fuel “anti-Ukrainian hysteria”.