Flight alerts went off all over Ukraine this afternoon. Ukrainian authorities describe it as a wave of attacks.
– There is an attack underway on the capital. Preliminary information says that two apartment buildings in the Pechersk district were hit, writes Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on social media, reproduced by Reuters news agency.
The district is just north of the area where the president’s office is located, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
– Several rockets were shot down over Kiev by anti-aircraft batteries. Doctors and first responders are at the scene. More information will come in due time, writes the mayor again.
Hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a video address at the G20 meeting in Bali, attacks are reported on several cities in Ukraine.
The rockets were also said to have hit Lviv in the west and Kharkiv in the northeast.
– There are explosions in Lviv, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyj writes on social media and asks city residents to stay in shelters, according to AFP news agency.
Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov also confirms the attacks on the city.
Numerous explosions were heard in Zhytomyr in the north, according to the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne. Also in Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhya, Kremenchuk, Odesa, Poltava there will be rocket attacks.
There will be a power outage in many cities. Half of Kiev is without electricity, according to Mayor Klitschko.
After Zelensky’s speech
The attacks come hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a video address at an ongoing G20 meeting in Bali.
– Russia responds to Zelenskyi’s powerful speech at the G20 meeting with a new missile attack. Does anyone really believe that the Kremlin wants peace? They want obedience. But in the end, terrorists always lose, the chief of staff of the administration wrote to the president of Ukraine on Twitter.
In his speech at the G20 meeting, President Zelenskyy called on Russia to end the war.
– I am convinced that now is the time when the destructive Russian war must and can be stopped. It will save thousands of lives, Zelenskyy said.
He added that there is no “excuse for nuclear blackmail” by the Russian leadership.
The G20 meeting will condemn the war
According to US diplomats, the final declaration of the G20 meeting condemns the war.
– I think you will see that most G20 members will make it clear that they condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, that they see Russia’s war in Ukraine as the main source of unimaginable economic and humanitarian suffering in the world, says a senior US official at the German news agency DPA.
Russia must be ready to accept the final declaration, even if the country is criticized. It is seen as a possible signal that Moscow can no longer count on China’s support.
Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron had meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the official meeting schedule.
They are calling on China to pressure Russia to end the war in the neighboring country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself is not present in Bali. He canceled last week. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now Russia’s main representative and the one to receive criticism.
Asking Russia to pay war damages
At the same time as the war in Ukraine dominates discussions at the G20 summit, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution last night stating that Russia “must be held accountable for all violations of international law in or against Ukraine”.
Although resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are not legally binding, unlike resolutions adopted by the Security Council, they carry great symbolic weight.
The General Assembly asks Russia to pay “compensation for the damage” caused. And the assembly says a registry must be created to document the Russian destruction.
Latvian Foreign Minister Andrejs Pildegovičs said when he introduced the draft resolution, which Norway helped draft, that Russia knowingly and intentionally attacks civilian infrastructure.
94 of the 193 member states of the United Nations voted in favor of the resolution. 73 countries abstained, while 14 countries voted against, including China, Iran and Cuba as well as Russia.
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