Moscow—Russia said Sunday it has again fired its newest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, destroying a fuel storage site in the country’s south.
The Russian defence ministry also said it killed more than 100 members of Ukrainian special forces and “foreign mercenaries” when it targeted a training centre in the town of Ovruch in northern Ukraine with sea-based missiles.
“Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region,” the defence ministry said.
The ministry said the base had been used for the main supplies of fuel for Ukrainian armoured vehicles in the country’s south.
The Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missiles were fired from airspace over Russian-controlled Crimea, the ministry said, adding that Kalibr cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea had also targeted the depot.
On Saturday, Russia said it had used the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy an underground missile and ammunition storage site in western Ukraine close to the border with NATO member Romania.
The Ukrainian armed forces confirmed to AFP on Saturday that the depot had been targeted but said they had “no information of the type of missile.”
Russian analysts said the use Friday of the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in Deliatyn, a village in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, was the first combat use of such weapons in the world.
The Russian defence ministry said that it also used long-range precision weapons against other facilities in Ukraine on Saturday evening and early Sunday.
Russian forces fired the Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea to target a plant in the northern city of Nizhyn used to repair armoured vehicles, the ministry said.
In Rome, Italy reacted furiously Saturday to “odious and unacceptable” insults and threats by a senior Russian foreign ministry official attacking sanctions applied against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
Alexey Paramonov, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s European department, accused Italy of falling victim to “anti-Russian hysteria”, in comments to the state-run RIA Novosti agency.
Italy had forgotten centuries-long relations and bilateral agreements “in a second”, he said.
He said he hoped French finance minister Bruno Le Maire’s vow earlier this month to “wage a total economic and financial war on Russia” would not “find followers in Italy and cause a series of appropriate irreversible consequences”.
Le Maire subsequently walked back his comments, conceding they had been “inappropriate”.
Paramonov said Russia had provided “significant assistance” to Italy during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, at the request of Italy’s defence minister Lorenzo Guerini.
Guerini was now one of the main “hawks and instigators of the anti-Russian campaign” within the government in Rome, he said.
Italy’s foreign ministry said it “firmly rejects the threatening statements” from Moscow.
Rome and its partners would “continue to exert every pressure” to stop the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, it added.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi condemned the “comparison between the invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic crisis in Italy” as “particularly odious and unacceptable”.
Guerini said Italy would “not give weight to propaganda”, and continued to stand by Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to address the Italian parliament on Tuesday.
In Kyiv, One of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works, Azovstal, has been badly damaged as Russian forces lay siege to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, officials said Sunday.
“One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated,” tweeted Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko.
Vasylenko posted a video of explosions on an industrial site, with thick columns of grey and black smoke rising from the buildings.
One of her colleagues, Serhiy Taruta, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces “had practically destroyed the factory”.
“We will return to the city, rebuild the enterprise and revive it,” Azovstal’s director general Enver Tskitishvili wrote on messaging app Telegram, without specifying the extent of the damage.
He said that when the invasion began on February 24, the factory had taken measures to reduce the environmental damage in the event of being hit.
“Coke oven batteries no longer pose a danger to the lives of residents,” he wrote. “We have also stopped the blast furnaces correctly.”
Azovstal is part of the Metinvest group, which is controlled by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.
Considered pro-Moscow before the war began, Akhmetov has since accused Russian troops of committing “crimes against humanity against Ukrainians”.
Russian air raids on Mykolaiv were taking place in quick succession Saturday, a regional official said, a day after a deadly strike on a military barracks in the southern Ukrainian city.
Vitaly Kim, head of the regional administration, said there wasn’t even enough time to raise the alarm over the raids “because by the time we announce this tornado, it’s already there”.
“The (alert) message and the bombings arrive at the same time,” he said on social media.
He gave no details about the extent of the damage or on any possible victims.
Dozens of soldiers were killed after Russian troops struck the military barracks in Mykolaiv early Friday, witnesses told AFP on Saturday, as a rescue operation was under way.
Authorities have not yet released an official death toll.
Ukrainian authorities say that Mykolaiv, which they describe as being a “shield” to the key strategic military port of Odessa, some 130 kilometres (85 miles) further west, is resisting Russian attacks and pushing back the invaders’ assaults.