Sound of explosions reported in western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Russian warship's Kalibr missiles destroy arms depot in north-west

Times of Israel
Sat, 26 Mar 2022 18:20 UTC

Footage of explosions in Lviv

Today, 6:13 pm Journalists from numerous outlets report hearing the sound of explosions in Lviv, as a plume of smoke is seen outside the western Ukrainian city.

Comment: Footage claiming to show the explosions have emerged on Twitter:

RT reports on the state-of-the-art Kalibr cruise missiles that have destroyed an arms depot in north-western Ukraine:

The Russian military has used its Kalibr cruise missiles to target an arms and hardware depot in Zhytomyr Region in north-western Ukraine, the Defense Ministry has revealed.

© Yandex

Zhytomyr Region

The high-precision strike was carried out early on Saturday by an unnamed small missile ship in the Black Sea, obliterating a Ukrainian military facility, according to officials.

The Ministry also shared a clip of the vessel firing four missiles into the dark skies in rapid succession.

Kalibr cruise missiles, which have been widely used by Russia during its military operation in Ukraine, exist in several modifications.

They can be fired from ships, submarines and planes, and used against a variety of land and water-based targets.

Some versions are also capable of going into a supersonic sprint in the final stage of flight, making it increasingly hard for air defense systems to tackle them.

Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in late February following a seven-year standoff over Kiev's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia's eventual recognition of the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocols were designed to regularize the status of the regions within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Another goal of the military operation is to "denazify" the country, according to Moscow. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it had been planning to retake the two republics by force.