(C) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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U.S. Embassy In Kyiv Closes Amid Air Strike Threat [1]
["Rfe Rl'S Ukrainian Service"]
Date: 2024-11-20 17:58:41+00:00
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closed its operations on November 20 after receiving "specific information" about "a potential significant air strike." It also urged employees and U.S. citizens in the Ukrainian capital to take immediate shelter if an air-raid alert was announced.
"Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy will be closed, and Embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place," it said in a statement, without giving any details about the possible strike.
The embassies of Italy, Greece, and Spain said they had also shut their operations following the unusual U.S. warning. Spain later said it reopened its facility after a temporarily closing.
France kept its embassy open but urged its citizens to be cautious.
The Ukrainian military suggested the information the U.S. Embassy was referring to was "fake."
"Messengers and social networks…are spreading a message about the threat of a 'particularly massive' missile and bomb attack on Ukrainian cities today."
"This message is a fake. It contains grammatical errors typical of Russian information and psychological operations,” it added.
It urged residents not to ignore air-raid sirens but also "not to succumb to panic."
An air-raid alert was issued for several Ukrainian regions, including Kyiv, early on November 20 due to the imminence of Russian drone strikes.
The U.S. warning came one day after Moscow said Ukraine had used U.S.-made long-range missile systems to strike a weapons depot in Russia's Bryansk region following U.S. President Joe Biden's reported authorization of their use.
The White House has not officially confirmed the decision.
President Volodymyr Zelensky did not confirm or deny the use of ATACMS in the attack on Bryansk, saying during a news conference that "Ukraine has long-range capabilities.... We now have a long 'Neptune' (Ukrainian-made cruise missiles) and not just one. And now we have ATACMS. And we will use all of this."
On November 20, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said a Russian military command post had been "successfully struck" in the town of Gubkin in Russia's Belgorod region, some 168 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. It did not say what kind of missiles had been used in the attack.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported the Ukrainian military had also fired a British-supplied Storm Shadow into Russia for the first time, citing an unnamed Western official.
Separately, the Ukrainian Air Force said Russian troops attacked Ukraine early on November 20 with 122 drones, 56 of which were shot down over 14 regions -- Kyiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskiy, Sumy, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa, Hennadiy Trukhanov, said the death toll after a Russian strike on the city on November 18 had risen to 11.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.rferl.org/a/kyiv-us-embassy-closes-air-strike/33208924.html
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