Russia comes with its own position after the strike on Lavra Pecerska monastery in Kiev: “It was an expired Patriot missile”
Russia's Defense Ministry denied on Monday that its military struck Kiev's historic Lavra Pecherska monastery in a nighttime attack, saying it targeted military factories, and that a US-made Patriot air defense missile had in fact damaged the religious site, Reuters reported.
The monastery, included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, caught fire on the night of Sunday into Monday, as part of the most intense Russian air attack on Kiev in the last two weeks.
Moscow said its attack targeted and hit drone production facilities, while Ukraine and many Western countries accused Russia of hitting the monastery.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the Patriot missile that, according to it, damaged the monastery could have been accidentally fired.
“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation do not plan or carry out attacks against civilian infrastructure,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“According to confirmed information, the complex of buildings at the Pecerska Monastery in Kiev was hit by a missile from the American Patriot air defense system. A possible reason for the failure of this system could be the fact that Western countries supplied the Kiev regime with missiles whose validity had expired”, the Russian Ministry of Defense also claimed in the statement.
The balance sheet of the Russian attack on Ukraine
Nine people have been killed in a wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
Four people died in the attacks on Kiev, while five rescuers died trying to put out a fire caused by an attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv, officials added.
The Dormition Cathedral in the Pecherska Monastery complex, one of Ukraine's most important religious and cultural sites, was significantly damaged in what Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko called a “brutal attack on our people and our heritage.”
Drone and missile attacks set buildings and cars on fire and left more than 140,000 people in the Ukrainian capital without electricity, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
