Ukraine slams Kyiv attack during UN chief’s visit

Russia's attack on Kyiv during a visit to the Ukrainian city by the UN chief is drawing international criticism as the missile onslaught shattered weeks of relative calm in the capital.

Ukraine's forces, meanwhile, fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, AP reports citing the country's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

A journalist at Ukraine's Radio Liberty was killed in one of several Russian missile strikes on Kyiv on Thursday, the station said.

Meanwhile, UN backed efforts to arrange safe passage for residents trapped in the ruins of Mariupol continued.

The bombardment in Kyiv came barely an hour after Zelenskyy held a news conference with UN Secretary General António Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around the and condemned attacks on civilians.

"This says a lot about Russia's true attitude toward global institutions, about attempts of the Russian leadership to humiliate the UN and everything the organisation represents," Zelenskyy said late Thursday in his nightly video address to the nation.

The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, denounced the attack as a "heinous act of barbarism".

Germany said the strike was "inhumane", adding that Berlin "strongly condemns the Russian missile attack on Kyiv while … Guterres was in talks". A government spokesperson, Wolfgang Büchner, accused Russia of having "no respect whatsoever for international law", report The Guardian.

The strikes were the boldest Russian attack on the capital since Moscow's forces retreated weeks ago following their failure to take the city. Russia is now pushing into the Donbas, the country's eastern industrial region, which the Kremlin says is its main objective.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said the body of Vira Hyrych, a journalist who had worked for the broadcaster since 2018 and who lived in one of the buildings, was found in the rubble on Friday.

Radio Free Europe President Jamie Fly said the broadcaster was "shocked and angered by the senseless nature of her death at home in a country and city she loved."

In another development, Russia used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibr cruise missiles, the first time Moscow has announced the use of its submarine fleet to hit its former Soviet neighbour, Reuters reports citing the Russian defence ministry.

A video released by the showed a volley of Kalibr missiles emerging from the sea and soaring off into the horizon - to what the ministry said were Ukrainian military targets.

This is the first time Russia's military has reported using submarine strikes against Ukrainian targets, Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

The bloodiest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war have been in Mariupol, an eastern port reduced to a wasteland by two months of Russian bombardment and siege.

Ukraine says 100,000 civilians remain in the city, which is mostly occupied by Russia. Hundreds of civilians are holed up with the last remaining defenders in underground bunkers beneath a huge steel works.

Zelenskiy's office said an operation was planned on Friday to get civilians out of the plant, giving no details.

In parts of Mariupol now held by Russian troops, emergency workers were gathering up bodies from the streets. Residents among the blasted ruins recounted the horror they had survived.

"We were hungry, the child was crying when the Grad (multiple rocket launcher) shells were striking near the house. We were thinking, this is it, the end. It can't be described," Viktoria Nikolayeva, 54, who survived the battle with her family in a basement, told Reuters, weeping.

"It was a massacre," said Vitaliy Kudasov, 71.

"It was the scariest thing when the shells were flying overhead. Shells, rounds and all such, you couldn't survive it. And yet we did," added Vitaliy.