Missile attack on town to ‘stop pro-russia vote’

Ukraine bombs building to deter ‘unwanted occupiers’ from holding Kremlin poll, says ousted mayor

‘The occupiers on Ukrainian land are, to put it mildly, not comfortable and they are not welcome here’

‘We are waiting for a gesture of goodwill – for them to leave the temporarily occupied territories’

UKRAINIAN missiles destroyed a building in the Russian-occupied territory of Melitopol in an attempt to thwart a pro-moscow vote, the ousted mayor has said.

The attack on the urban settlement of Myrne, near Melitopol, came a day after analysts said that partisans would disrupt referendums organised by the Kremlin to justify integrating occupied areas into Russia.

Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian former mayor of Melitopol, appeared to suggest that Ukraine had deliberately destroyed the building in Myrne.

“The occupiers on Ukrainian land are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable and they are not welcome here,” Mr Fedorov said on his Telegram channel.

Vladimir Putin this month finalised plans to hold referendums by mid-september in all areas of Ukraine that his armies have captured. This includes Donetsk and Luhansk as well as Melitopol, Kherson and Mariupol.

Mr Putin has justified his invasion of Ukraine as necessary to protect Russia from Nazis living in Ukraine and also to rejoin Ukrainians with their Slavic Russian brothers.

Those living in occupied regions, though, have said that being integrated into Russia was not welcome and that the option to take up Russian passports has largely been ignored.

The economies of occupied regions and their basic services are failing and people are eager to leave.

Partisans have also intensified their operations, killing collaborator officials, destroying infrastructure and denting supply lines.

Melitopol, in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, had a pre-war population of around 150,000 and is one of the biggest cities to fall under Russian control since February.

Mr Fedorov also said that a Russian army base in the Avtotsvetlit metals plant in Melitopol had also been destroyed in a Ukrainian missile attack.

“Every day for three weeks, something happens to them,” he said of the Russian army occupying Melitopol and the surrounding region.

“We are waiting for a gesture of goodwill – for them to leave the temporarily occupied territories.”

Ukraine has also stepped up its bombardment of Russian positions along the southern front, targeting infrastructure and supply lines.

Analysts have said that this bombardment is designed to soften up the Russian forces in Kherson City before a planned offensive to retake the region.

And video from the River Dnipro, near Kherson city, showed more Russian artillery shells hitting the Antonovsky Bridge, which connects Kherson City on the west bank of the river with its supply lines on the east bank. Phillips O’brien, professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, said Ukraine advertised its offensive to draw Russian forces into Kherson City.

“Take those [bridges] out and the large Russian forces on the west bank will be in big trouble,” he said.

Media reports also said that Ukrainian forces had intensified their bombardment of the town of Nova Kakhovka, the second-biggest town in Kherson region.

Senior Ukrainian officials said that their artillery had destroyed an instrument-making factory in the city that Russian soldiers had been using as a base. The pro-russia mayor of the city was shot dead this month.