Kyiv: A blaze at an oil terminal has been reported in the Ukrainian town of Vasylkiv, about 30km, or 18 miles, southwest of the capital, Kyiv, overnight.
The town’s mayor, Natalia Balasinovich, said Russian missiles hit the oil storage area southwest of the air base’s main runway in a video posted online. The National News Agency of Ukraine later confirmed the reports.
Photographs and videos posted online showed large flames rising under the night sky.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said on Telegram.
The missile attack was carried out on the Vasilkovskaya oil depot of the KLO company. Rescuers have already left for the scene of the tragedy. Most likely, there were no casualties. It will burn for a long time. The environmental damage will be colossal.”
The mayor of Vasylkiv, Natalia Balasinovich, also confirmed that rockets hit the oil depot, and a strong fire started.
The blaze prompted authorities to urge residents to close their windows to avoid breathing in smoke and harmful substances.
A natural gas pipeline was also blown up in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, after a Russian attack, the Ukrainian state service of special communications said.
A mushroom-shaped explosion was shown in a video it posted on the Telegram messaging app.
It was not immediately clear how important the pipeline was and whether the blast could disrupt gas shipments outside the city or the country.
The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection warned that the explosion, which it said looked like a mushroom cloud, could cause an “environmental catastrophe” and advised residents to cover their windows with damp cloth or gauze and to drink plenty of fluids.
Soon after, a radioactive waste disposal site near Kyiv was also hit by an airstrike, but the storage facilities were not damaged, Ukraine’s nuclear agency said. However, there was no evidence of a leak.
The incident happened at about 1:20 am (local time) on Sunday when a radioactive waste disposal site of the State Specialized Enterprise “Radon” was hit by missiles.
NRIU said the automated radiation monitoring system at the site had failed, but measurements taken with portable devices in Kyiv found that radiation levels were normal. There is no threat to the public.
However, the State Emergency Service refuted the report by State Special Communications Service that the projectile allegedly hit the burial place of radioactive substances.
The Ukrainian soldiers who defended an island in the Black Sea from an air and sea bombardment – reportedly telling an officer on board a Russian navy warship to “go f*** yourself” when asked to surrender, are believed to still be alive according to Ukrainian officials.
There were 13 border guards stationed on Snake Island, a roughly 16-hectare (40-acre) rocky island owned by Ukraine that sits about 186 miles (300km) west of Crimea when Russian troops bombed the island on Thursday.
All 13 soldiers were believed to have died after refusing to surrender, Ukrainian officials announced.
However, in a recent statement, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said:
We [have a] strong belief that all Ukrainian defenders of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island may be alive.
After receiving information about their possible location, the DPSU together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine is conducting work on identifying our soldiers.”
Russia’s attack on Kyiv continued on Sunday morning, with two large explosions lighting up the night sky south of the Ukrainian capital. While one detonation appeared to be approximately 20 kilometres, or about 12 miles, from the city centre, the second explosion rocked the southwestern part of Kyiv just before 1 am (local time), CNN reported. Multiple towns and cities across Ukraine wake to find scenes of destruction.
Western allies have agreed to block Russia’s access to the Swift international banking payment system. The US, Canada and key European countries, including Germany, have agreed to remove “selected Russian banks” from the Swift payment system, the countries announced on Saturday.
Britain is preparing a “hit list” of Russian oligarchs to be targeted by sanctions in the coming months, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said.
- Liquor stores and bars in the US and Canada are targeting Russia’s national drink in a show of unity with the people of Ukraine. Shelves in both countries are being stripped of Russian vodka, with the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, announcing on Saturday the removal of “Russian-made and Russian-branded spirits from our liquor and wine outlets until further notice”.
- Japanese billionaire Hiroshi ‘Mickey’ Mikitani has said he will donate $8.7m to the government of Ukraine, calling Russia’s invasion “a challenge to democracy”. The founder of e-commerce giant Rakuten said in a letter addressed to Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the donation of 1bn yen ($8.7m) will go toward “humanitarian activities to help people in Ukraine who are victims of the violence”, Agence France-Presse reported.
- A Ukrainian company in charge of building and maintaining roads said it was removing all road signs that could be used by invading Russian forces to find their way around the country. The company, Ukravtodor, said in a Facebook post: “The enemy has poor communications, they cannot navigate the terrain. Let us help them get straight to hell.”