Lviv finds itself on front line as war moves west
MULTIPLE explosions apparently caused by missiles struck the western Ukrainian city of Lviv yesterday as the country braced for an all-out Russian assault in the east.
At least seven people were killed as plumes of black smoke rose over the city after the blasts.
Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine have been less affected by two months of fighting than other parts of the country, and have been considered a relative haven.
Lviv’s regional governor, Maksym Kozytsky, revealed that there were four Russian missile strikes. He added that three hit military infrastructure facilities and one struck a tyre shop, and that emergency teams were putting out fires.
Later, Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, put the toll at seven dead and 11 wounded, including one child.
Military analysts say Russia is increasing its strikes on weapons factories, railways and other infrastructure targets across Ukraine to wear down the country’s ability to resist a major ground offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland.
The fall of Mariupol, which has been reduced to rubble in a sevenweek siege, would give Moscow its biggest victory of the war, but a few thousand fighters, by Russia’s estimate, are holding on to the giant four-square-mile Azovstal steel mill.
Many Mariupol civilians, including children, are also sheltering at the Azovstal plant, Mikhail Vershinin, the head of the city’s patrol police, said. He added that they are hiding from Russian shelling and from any occupying Russian soldiers.
Capturing the city on the Sea of Azov would free up Russian troops for the expected new offensive to take control of the Donbas, in Ukraine’s industrial east. It also would allow Russia to fully secure a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a major port and its prized industrial assets.
Russia is bent on capturing the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already control some territory, since its attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, failed.
“We are doing everything to ensure the defence” of eastern Ukraine, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation on Sunday.
As for besieged Mariupol, there appeared to be little hope of military rescue by Ukrainian forces any time soon. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Sunday that the remaining Ukrainian troops and civilians there are encircled. He added that they “continue their struggle” but admitted the city effectively does not exist any more because of massive destruction.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have carried out aerial attacks near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s military capacity ahead of the anticipated assault on the Donbas.
After the humiliating sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet last week in what the Ukrainians boasted was a missile attack, the Kremlin has vowed to step up strikes on the capital.
Russia said on Sunday that it had attacked an ammunition plant near Kyiv overnight with precision-guided missiles, the third such strike in as many days. Explosions were also reported in Kramatorsk, the eastern city where rockets earlier this month killed at least 57 people at a train station crowded with civilians.