عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Ukraine Says Nine Injured in Russia’s 19th Air Attack on Kyiv in Oct

Residents look at their apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
Residents look at their apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Ukraine Says Nine Injured in Russia’s 19th Air Attack on Kyiv in Oct

Residents look at their apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
Residents look at their apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 30, 2024. (Reuters)

Nine people were injured, several apartments set ablaze and a kindergarten was damaged in Russia's 19th attack on the Ukrainian capital this month, officials in Kyiv said on Wednesday.

Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 62 drones overnight, but air defense units destroyed 33 of them over Kyiv and other regions, although 25 were unaccounted for.

"Nineteen air attacks on Kyiv in October!" Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app. "Overnight, Russian drones again flew over the capital."

Falling debris from a destroyed drone sparked a fire in a multi-storey apartment building in Kyiv's western district of Solomianskyi and injured at least nine people, including an 11-year-old girl, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

"All of them were treated by medics on the spot," Klitschko said.

Nineteen people were evacuated from the building, said the city's military administration, which also posted photographs of a building with blown-out windows and damaged facade that it described as a kindergarten in Solomianskyi.

Reuters witnesses at the scene saw firefighters scrambling to douse flames at flats in an apartment building with several windows blown out.

Air raid alerts sounded across Kyiv, the surrounding region and nearly the whole eastern half of Ukraine for more than two hours overnight.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

Russia Sentences Former US Consulate Worker to Nearly 5 Years in Prison

FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Lefortovo District Court, Robert Shonov, a Russian national who worked at the now-closed US consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years, is escorted by officers to the court room at the Lefortovo District Court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Lefortovo District Court via AP, File)
FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Lefortovo District Court, Robert Shonov, a Russian national who worked at the now-closed US consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years, is escorted by officers to the court room at the Lefortovo District Court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Lefortovo District Court via AP, File)
TT
TT

Russia Sentences Former US Consulate Worker to Nearly 5 Years in Prison

FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Lefortovo District Court, Robert Shonov, a Russian national who worked at the now-closed US consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years, is escorted by officers to the court room at the Lefortovo District Court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Lefortovo District Court via AP, File)
FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Lefortovo District Court, Robert Shonov, a Russian national who worked at the now-closed US consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years, is escorted by officers to the court room at the Lefortovo District Court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Lefortovo District Court via AP, File)

A court in Russia's far-eastern city of Vladivostok on Friday convicted a former US Consulate worker charged with cooperating with a foreign state and sentenced him to four years and 10 months in prison.
Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen and former employee of the US Consulate in Vladivostok, was arrested in May 2023. Russia's top domestic security agency, the FSB, accused him of “gathering information about the special military operation" in Ukraine, a partial call-up in Russian regions and its influence on "protest activities of the population in the runup to the 2024 presidential election.”
The US State Department last year condemned the arrest and said the allegations against Shonov “are wholly without merit,” The Associated Press reported.
Shonov was charged under a new article of Russian law that criminalizes “cooperation on a confidential basis with a foreign state, international or foreign organization to assist their activities clearly aimed against Russia’s security.” Kremlin critics and human rights advocates have said it is so broad that it can be used to punish any Russian with foreign connections. It carries a prison sentence of up to eight years.
The State Department has said Shonov worked at the US Consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years. The consulate closed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened.
The State Department has said that after a Russian government order in April 2021 required the dismissal of all local employees in US diplomatic outposts in Russia, Shonov worked at a company the US contracted with to support its embassy in Moscow.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in May 2023 that Shonov’s only role at the time of his arrest was “to compile media summaries of press items from publicly available Russian media sources.”
Shonov was held in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, notorious for its harsh conditions, pending investigation, but stood trial in Vladivostok's Primorsky District Court.

In addition to a prison term, which Shonov was ordered to serve in a general regime penal colony, the court ruled that he must pay a fine of 1 million rubles (just over $10,000) and face additional restrictions for 16 months after finishing his prison sentence.