A frozen goods warehouse caught fire due to Russian shelling in Brovary district, northeast of Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s interior ministry.
The shelling took place in the village of Kvitneve at about 3.30 am local time (5.30 am GMT), the ministry said. Preliminary reports show there were no casualties.
Earlier we reported that two oil depots near Kyiv had also caught fire after Russian attacks.
Ukrainian officials have said Kyiv is “ready to fight” as Russian forces renewed their bombardment on the capital and observers warned of “an unimaginable tragedy” unfolding after more than two weeks of war, Tess McClure, Peter Beaumont and Luke Harding report.
Air raid sirens and shelling rang out over Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities on Saturday morning amid warnings from western defence officials that the Russians were beginning to gain ground around the capital.
There were reports of loud explosions in Dnipro in the country’s east on Saturday, as well as Mykolaiv, Nikolaev and Kropyvnytskyi.
But Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the capital was “ready to fight”. He called it a “city under siege”, with checkpoints prepared and supply lines in place.
Kyiv will stand until the end.
Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies on Saturday has shown homes and buildings on fire and Russian artillery battalions appearing to fire on towns surrounding to the north-west of the Ukrainian capital as forces advance. The Guardian has not independently verified the images.
A senior US defence official said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday: “We do assess that the Russians are beginning to make more momentum on the ground towards Kyiv, particularly from the east.”
The UK Ministry of Defence said on Saturday morning that “the bulk of Russian ground forces” were around 25km from the centre of Kyiv, while the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and continued to suffer heavy Russian shelling.
