Three killed in Lutsk as Russia continues to shell Ukrainian cities
Overnight strikes targeted the cities of Lviv and Lutsk in western Ukraine, local officials said on Tuesday morning.
The latest developments from the war in Ukraine.
“Many rockets were shot down, but there were also strikes in Lviv,” the city’s mayor, Andriï Sadovyi, said on Telegram, adding that “residential buildings” had been hit.
“There are fires in the upper floors. We are evacuating people,” he added.
In Lutsk, about 150 km north-west of Lviv, at least three people were killed in the attack on businesses in the city. There are more victims in hospital,” he added.
The Russian bombardment has also affected other cities in the country, and an air raid siren was heard across the country at around 04:00 local time. A Russian missile hit a factory in Dnipro, injuring at least one person.
In March 2022, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six others wounded when the Russian army shelled the Lutsk airbase, according to local authorities.
Lviv, a large city in western Ukraine that is rarely targeted, was attacked by Russia in July, killing ten people, according to local authorities.
Russian central bank raises interest rate as ruble tanks
Russia’s central bank raised interest rates by 3.5% as the ruble fell to its lowest level since the start of the war with Ukraine.
The emergency meeting was held on Tuesday to review its key interest rate, increasing the likelihood of a rise in borrowing costs, which would support the flagging ruble.
The Russian currency had fallen past 101 rubles to the dollar, continuing a decline of more than a third since the beginning of the year and reaching its lowest level in almost 17 months. The ruble recovered slightly after the central bank’s announcement.
The meeting was called after President Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser, Maksim Oreshkin, blamed the weak ruble on “loose monetary policy” in an article for state news agency Tass on Monday.
He said a strong ruble was in the interests of the Russian economy and that a weak currency “complicates economic restructuring and negatively affects people’s real incomes”.
Oreshkin said that Russia’s central bank has “all the necessary tools” to stabilise the situation and that he expects normalisation soon.
Crash of Russian military jet trainer in region near Crimea
One person was killed when a Russian military jet trainer crashed while trying to land in a region bordering Russia-annexed Crimea, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday.
The crash of the Czechoslovak L-39 in the Krasnodar region was the second fatal military crash during a training flight in three days.
On Saturday, a Sukhoi-30 fighter crashed in the Kaliningrad exclave, killing both pilots.
The ministry did not say whether anyone else was on board the L-39, which is a two-seater.
The Russian Air Force has suffered a series of crashes, which some observers have attributed to the increased number of flights amid the fighting in Ukraine. Last month, two Russian fighter jets collided during training missions – one in the Pacific and one in the Sea of Azov.
