‘Curtain of fire’ as missiles bombard eastern Ukraine

Russian attacks have laid down a curtain of fire across areas of eastern Ukraine where pockets of resistance are denying Moscow full military control of the region, almost four months after the Kremlin unleashed its invasion.

“Today everything that can burn is on fire,” Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, said.

Russia’s war has caused alarm over food supplies from Ukraine to the rest of the world and gas supplies from Russia, as well as raising questions about security in western Europe.

The Russian military currently controls about 95% of the Luhansk region.

But for weeks Moscow has struggled to overrun it completely, despite deploying extra troops.

In the city of Sievierodonetsk, Ukrainian defenders held on to the Azot chemical plant in the industrial outskirts. Around 500 civilians are sheltering at the plant.

Mr Haidai said: “Our positions are being fired at from howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, largecalibre artillery, missile strikes.”

The neighbouring Lysychansk, the only city in the Luhansk region that is still fully under Ukrainian control, was also the target of multiple air strikes.

Separately, US attorney general Merrick Garland met for around an hour at a Ukrainian-Polish border post with Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova.

They discussed how the US can help identify, apprehend and prosecute anyone involved in war crimes in Ukraine.

The Ukraine president’s office said yesterday that at least six civilians had been killed over the previous 24 hours, and 16 others were wounded.

According to its daily update, Russian forces shelled the northern Chernihiv region, and intensified their shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s secondlargest city.

Explosions also occurred yesterday morning in the southern city of Mykolaiv.

Air strikes on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk have ruined residential buildings and a police station.

In the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, a school burned down as a result of the shelling, the president’s office said.

International support for Ukraine’s plight was demonstrated on Monday when a Nobel Peace Prize medal auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov sold for £103.5 million (£84.4m). The auction aimed to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities blocked the website of British newspaper The Telegraph over an article it published, the internet rights group Roskomsvoboda reported yesterday.

The story alleged Russian forces had prepared a mobile crematorium for use in its war with Ukraine, possibly to hide its military casualties.

CONFLICT: People move rubble at Liubotyn Railway Transport Lyceum, which housed a humanitarian aid warehouse.