Eleven killed as three Russian missiles hit northern Ukraine city

THREE Russian missiles slammed into a central area of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv yesterday, hitting an eight-storey apartment building and killing at least 11 people, local officials said.

At least 22 other people were injured in the morning attack, the city’s acting mayor, Oleksandr Lomako, said.

Chernihiv lies some 90 miles (150km) north of the capital, Kyiv, near the border with Russia and Belarus, and has a population of around 250,000 people.

The latest Russian bombardment came as the war stretched into its third year and approached what could be a critical juncture as a lack of further military support from Ukraine’s Western partners increasingly leaves it at the mercy of the Kremlin’s bigger forces.

Through the winter months, Russia made no dramatic advance along the 620-mile (1,000km) front line, focusing instead on attritional warfare. However, Ukraine’s shortage of artillery ammunition, troops and armoured vehicles has allowed the Russians to gradually push forward, military analysts say.

A crucial element for Ukraine is the hold-up in Washington of approval for an aid package that includes roughly $60bn (£48.2bn) for Ukraine. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he will try to move the package forward this week.

Ukraine’s need is now acute, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

“The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore manoeuvre to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of US military assistance to Ukraine,” the ISW said in an assessment late on Tuesday.

“Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defence and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale,” it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with Western countries to provide his country with more air defence systems.

He said of the Chernihiv strike: “This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defence equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror was also sufficient.”

Earlier this week he said Ukraine recently ran out of air defence missiles while it was defending against a major attack that destroyed one of its largest power plants.