Kyiv, Ukraine (AP)-The capital of Ukraine came under a large-scale Russian drone and rocket attack with explosions and machine gun fire in the city on Saturday, forcing many KYIV residents to hide in underground metro stations.
The nocturnal Russian attack came hours after Russia and Ukraine started a major prisoners, hundreds of soldiers and civilians in the first phase of an exchange that was agreed by the two parties last week during a meeting in Istanbul. The agreement was a moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the 3-year war.
The rubble of intercepted rockets and drones fell early in at least 4 city districts of the capital early Saturday, acting head of Kyiv Military Administration, Tymur Tkachenko, wrote on Telegram. According to Tkachenko, six people needed medical care after the attack, two fires found in Solomianskyi district of KYIV.
Prior to the attack, city mayor Vitalii Klitschko warned the inhabitants of Kyiv for more than 20 Russian strike drones on their way to Kyiv. As the attack continued, he said that Drone -Urpuin fell into a shopping center and a residential building in the Obolon district of Kyiv. Emergency services were on their way to the site, Klitschko said.
The prisoners Swap Friday was the first phase of a complicated exchange in which 1,000 prisoners were involved on each side.
President Volodyymyr Zenskyy said that the first phase brought 390 Ukrainians home, with further releases that are expected to make the biggest exchange of the war at the weekend. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that the same number received from Ukraine.
When the liberated men entered the medical facility on Friday, people who took drawing and photos of their relatives or brigade numbers shouted, looking for news from a loved one. The recurring men inspected the photos and a soldier said he shared a cell with one of those at sea of portraits that held him.
“Vanya!” Nataliia Mosych, among the collected relatives, “my husband!”
She had not seen her husband, Ivan, for almost two years, she said radiantly.
“It's an incredible feeling. I am still in shock,” Mosych said after he came out to greet his family after registration procedures in the facility. “I am really happy and we have not forgotten, and we still mean something for Ukraine.”
The exchange, which would have been the last of dozens of Swaps since the war and the largest involved Ukrainian citizens ever, did not arrive in fighting.
Fighting also continued along the approximately 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) front line, where tens of thousands of soldiers were killed and neither of them admitted in its deep strikes.
