Ukraine village in ruins after Russian blitz
Residents flee from relentless advance on Ocheretyne
The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by the Associated Press shows. The village has been a target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Russian troops have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged the Russians have gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3000 before the war, but says fighting continues.
Among residents who fled the village was a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 10km alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached Ukrainian front lines.
Not a single person is seen in the footage obtained, and no building in Ocheretyne appears to have been left untouched by the fighting. Most houses, apartment blocks and other buildings look damaged beyond repair, and many houses have been pummeled into piles of wood and bricks. A factory on the outskirts has also been badly damaged.
The footage also shows smoke billowing from several houses, and fires burning in at least two buildings.
Elsewhere, Russia has in recent weeks stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an attempt to pummel the region’s energy infrastructure and terrorise its 1.3 million residents.
Four people were wounded and a two-storey civilian building was damaged and set ablaze overnight
after Russian forces struck Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, with exploding drones, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said yesterday.
The four, including a 13-year-old, were hurt by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian state agency RIA reported yesterday that Moscow’s forces struck a drone warehouse in Kharkiv that had been used by Ukrainian troops overnight, citing Sergei Lebedev, described as a co-ordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas. His comments could not be independently verified.
Russian forces continued hitting Kharkiv and its surroundings on Saturday, according to updates posted by Syniehubov and other Ukrainian officials on the Telegram messenger app. One strike hit a civilian business in an industrial district of the city, wounding at least six people, Syniehubov said. A further attack killed a 49-year-old civilian outside his house in Slobozhanske, a village northeast of the city, the governor reported.
In the Black Sea port of Odesa, which has been repeatedly targeted in recent days, three people were hurt in a rocket attack on “civil infrastructure,”
regional Governor Oleh
Kiper said.
Ukraine’s military said Russia launched 13 Shahed drones at the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of eastern Ukraine overnight. All were shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
Ukraine’s energy ministry yesterday said the overnight strikes damaged an electrical substation in the Dnipropetrovsk region, briefly cutting power.
According to Serhii Lysak, the province’s governor, falling drone debris damaged critical infrastructure and three private houses, one of which caught fire. Two residents were hospitalised.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed early yesterday its forces overnight shot down four US-provided longrange ATACMS missiles over the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The ministry did not provide further details.
Ukraine has recently begun using the missiles, provided secretly by the United States, to hit Russian-held areas, including a military airfield in Crimea and in another area east of the occupied city of Berdyansk, US officials said last week.