Guwahati: Two large explosions lit up the night sky south of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Sunday morning.
The explosions appear to have been around Vasylkiv, which has a large military airfield and multiple fuel tanks and is about about 30 kilometers south of Kyiv.
The latest development comes after Ukraine’s outgunned forces held the capital for the third day on Saturday as battles continued across the country, while a defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told citizens to defend the country.
The sound of small arms fire and the impact of multiple rockets punctuated the night following a day of heightened tension in the city. A CNN crew saw Ukrainian troops fire warning shots and throw suspected Russian saboteurs from their cars to the ground.
After unconfirmed reports of Russian paratroopers landing in the city’s northern areas, a bridge was raised for the first time in years in a bid to cut a main connection between the north and south of the city — which sits on an inlet from the Black Sea.
A blast lit up the skyline on Saturday night in the strategic maritime city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine as heavy shelling reverberated around its outskirts.
As Russia’s war of aggression moves to the streets of multiple Ukrainian cities, with Ukraine’s outnumbered military continuing to hold back the invading forces in multiple locations, the Russian Ministry of Defense said its troops have been ordered to resume their offensive “in all directions.”
Ukraine’s prime minister announced the country was closing its borders with Russia and Belarus beginning Monday, and only Ukrainian citizens would be able to cross into Ukraine from those two countries.
A senior US defense official warned Saturday that more than half of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assembled power was “now committed inside Ukraine.”
Heavy fighting was ongoing in the northern city of Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border, while there was “less resistance in the south,” a US official said.
Meanwhile, evacuation of Indians stranded in Ukraine, mostly students, continued as 219 people got off from the first flight that flew them home from Bucharest in Romania. Union Minister Piyush Goyal, who was at the Mumbai airport to receive those evacuated, said: “We are happy that 219 of our citizens, who are mostly students, the majority of them girls, have come back safely. The Prime Minister especially asked me to go to Mumbai to ensure that they are taken care of.”
