Russia strikes several cities, 20 bodies found near Kyiv
Russian missiles hit two cities in central Ukraine early on Saturday, damaging infrastructure and residential buildings, the head of the Poltava region said. “Poltava. A missile struck one of the infrastructure facilities overnight,” Dmitry Lunin wrote in an online post. “Kremenchuk. Many attacks on the city in the morning.”
Lunin later said at least four missiles hit two infrastructure objects in Poltava while, according to preliminary information, three enemy planes attacked the industrial facilities of Kremenchuk.
Poltava city is the capital of the Poltava region, east of Kyiv, and Kremenchuk one of the area’s major cities. There was no immediate information about possible casualties, Lunin said. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
In the Dnipro region in southwestern Ukraine, missiles hit an infrastructure facility, wounding two people and causing significant damage, Valentyn
Reznichenko, head of the region, said in an online post.
In the city of Kryvyi Rih a petrol station has been shelled, causing fire, he added.
20 bodies found in one street in town near Kyiv
The bodies of at least 20 men in civilian clothes were found lying in a single street on Saturday after Ukrainian forces retook the town of Bucha near
Kyiv from Russian troops, AFP journalists said.
One of the bodies of the men had his hands tied, and the corpses were strewn over several hundred metres (yards) of the residential road in the suburban town northwest of the capital. The cause of death was not immediately clear although at least one person had what appeared to be a large head wound.
As Russian forces pull back from Ukraine’s capital region, retreating troops are creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and “even the bodies of those killed”, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross was renewing efforts to evacuate civilians in a convoy from the besieged port of Mariupol on Saturday as Russian forces looked to be regrouping for fresh attacks in southeast Ukraine. The war has killed thousands, uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population and devastated several cities.
More than 4.1 million people have fled Ukraine, the United Nations says.
Russia’s talks with Ukraine have not been easy, but the main thing is that they are continuing, RIA news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying. He also said Russia would like to continue talks with Ukraine in neighbouring Belarus but Kyiv opposed the idea.