Russia Hits Kyiv With Ballistic Missiles • France 24 English

We can now cross to Kyiv and speak with our correspondent there, Gulliver Craig. So, Gulliver, Ukraine says Russia launched one of its biggest missile attacks of the war. What's different about this latest bombardment? Well, one of the differences is the intensity of it because around 30 missiles were fired at Kyiv in the space of half an hour. So it's like one a minute. So in terms of intensity and how terrifying it was, this was certainly unprecedented. I'm standing in one of the worst hit areas, Lukhanivka, which has often been targeted by Russia in the course of this war. Behind me, you can see the damage. There is the entrance to an underpass that the rocket caused it to completely cave in, which is pretty alarming for passersby to look at how deep it could get underground. If people had been sheltering in there, they might have not been safe. It seems that they weren't, though, because, as I think you said, only one person was killed, 17 people injured overnight. Although residential buildings were damaged, none of them took a direct hit. The direct hit seemed to be targeting industrial sites, warehouses in particular, overnight. What's also interesting is that according to the Ukrainian Air Force, they did manage to shoot down 17 out of 25 ballistic missiles. Recently, they have been failing to shoot down any ballistic missiles and saying that this is because they didn't have the necessary PAC-3 ammunition for the Patriot air defense system designed by the Americans. So I suppose we can conclude that they got at least something of a restock for that, though nobody has confirmed that expressly. There was also a strike, we've been learning today, on Kharkiv, where three people were killed at a postal depot that was hit there. Now, Gulliver, there are also protests ongoing in the capital, protests over the dismissal of the defense minister. What's the latest with that? I'm told that people are already gathering on Ivano-Frankivsk Square in the center of Kiev, but the scheduled time for the protest is 8 p.m. local time. We'll see whether or not as many people show up as yesterday, because Volodymyr Zelensky has clearly been trying to calm things down by holding a whole series of consultations with military top brass, commanders of different brigades, sort of hinting that he might be willing to replace the chief of the general staff, Oleksandr Sirsky. This dismissal of the defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov, it has emerged, was mainly due to a conflict between him and Oleksandr Sirsky, who he accused of blocking all of his initiatives. Now, Ukrainians have got some hope that the president is going to act, and he has promised to act, but he hasn't actually said at all that he is planning to dismiss Sirsky, and some commentators are saying that that would be extremely difficult for him to do, very complicated, because the rest of the general staff, many of them are close to Sirsky, would leave with him. It's clearly dangerous to change horses in midstream, and the president himself and his advisors have been saying we're going to do something, that this is going to take time. I suspect that there are a great many protesters who think that that is simply not enough, but some may be feeling that they do need to be, of course, careful playing with fire by demanding and so strongly criticizing the head of the armed forces at such a difficult time for the country. Gulliver, thank you so much for keeping us updated. That's Gulliver Craig reporting there in Kyiv.