Kharkiv pounded amid all out assault fears
RUSSIA pounded Kharkiv with missiles, kamikaze drones and artillery yesterday amid signs that it will try to capture Ukraine’s second city.
“We fear this is the start of a Kharkiv assault and that we will all perish here,” said resident Olena Kurylo, who became known as the “face of the war” after her home was destroyed in the first moments of the conflict unleashed by Vladimir Putin.
Ms Kurylo, 54, said repeated overnight attacks meant residents were unable to sleep and that “we are at the end of our tether from tiredness”, adding: “This is their aim – to exhaust us and make us leave the city so they can take it.”
Maniac
But the defiant teacher – who was treated in Britain for damage to her eye in the first 2022 strikes – said: “We won’t leave. This is our land. This is home.”
Calling Putin a “deranged maniac”, she added: “We’ve got to stand up to him… even if the walls of my bathroom where I’ve been spending so many nights are the last thing I’ll see.”
A girl, 11, and woman, 72, were wounded overnight in Kharkiv and dozens of houses in residential areas were damaged.
Ukraine detained a suspected Russian spy for allegedly helping Moscow’s armed forces locate targets.
Russia claimed it had struck ammunition stores and Ukrainian military personnel.
The onslaught comes as
Ukraine destroyed another oil refinery in Russia in a kamikaze drone attack.
Video footage showed an inferno at the First Plant facility in the Kaluga region.
A day earlier, Ukraine flew an attack drone across almost 950 miles of Russian territory to hit the giant Salavat plant in Bashkortostan.
The repeated attacks on oil installations reveal failures in Russian air defences and are damaging the economy and military fuel supplies.
In Kaluga, three huge tanks of diesel exploded after the second attack on this refinery in two months.
Regional governorVladislav Shapsha said: “The extent of damage to the enterprise is being assessed.”
Ukraine also targeted the Bryansk, Kursk, Moscow and Belgorod regions, the Russians reported.
The fighting came as Putin reappointed low-key technocrat Mikhail Mishustin as his prime minister.
The career bureaucrat would become acting president if Putin were incapacitated.