Russia intensifies its attacks
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Russian forces on Saturday fired missiles and shells at cities and towns across Ukraine after Russia’s military announced that it was stepping up its onslaught. Ukraine reported that at least 17 civilians were killed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “instructions to further intensify the actions of units in all operational areas, in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in the Donbas and other regions,” his ministry said Saturday.
Russia’s military campaign has focused on the eastern Donbas, but the new attacks hit the north and south as well. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has seen severe bombardments in recent days, with officials and local commanders voicing fears that a second full-scale Russian assault may be looming.
President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians not to fall for Russia’s attempts to scare them with warnings of horrendous missile attacks to come, which he said were aimed at dividing Ukrainian society.
“Sometimes, information weapons can do more than regular weapons,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation.
“It’s clear that no Russian missiles or artillery will be able to break our unity or lead us away from our path,” he added. “And it is also clear that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, fakes or conspiracy theories.”
In the Kharkiv region, at least three civilians were killed and three more injured Saturday in a predawn strike on the city of Chuhuiv, 75 miles from the Russian border, police said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, deputy head of the Kharkiv police force, said four missiles presumably fired from the Russian city of Belgorod hit an apartment building, a school and administrative buildings at about 3:30 a.m. Writing on Facebook, he said the three bodies were found under the rubble.
One resident said she was lucky to have survived.
“I was going to run and hide in the bathroom. I didn’t make it, and that’s what saved me,” said Valentina Bushuyeva. Pointing up at her destroyed apartment, she said, “There’s the bathroom: explosion. Kitchen: half a room. And I survived because I stayed put.”
In the neighboring Sumy region, one civilian was killed and at least seven injured after Russians opened mortar and artillery fire on three towns and villages not far from the Russian border, regional Gov. Dmytro Zhyvytsky said Saturday.
In the embattled eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians were killed and 14 wounded in Russian attacks, the governor said Saturday.
On the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk region, a woman said a neighbor had been killed by a rocket attack Saturday afternoon. Tetiana Pashko said her 35-year-old neighbor, killed in her yard, had evacuated earlier this year as authorities had requested but had returned home after being unable to support herself. Pashko said she herself suffered a cut on her leg, and one of her family’s dogs was killed.
Several homes on the quiet residential street were damaged, with doors and roofs ripped away.
“We can rebuild, but we can’t bring her back,” said another neighbor, Olha Rusanova.
In the neighboring Luhansk region, Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian overnight assault on a strategic eastern highway, said Gov. Serhiy Haidai, adding that Russia had been attempting for more than two months to capture the road between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut.
The Luhansk and Donetsk regions make up the Donbas, an eastern industrial region that once powered Ukraine’s economy and has mostly been taken over by Russian and separatist forces.
In southern Ukraine, two people were wounded by Russian shelling in the town of Bashtanka, northeast of the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, according to regional Gov. Vitaliy Kim. He said Mykolaiv came under renewed Russian fire before dawn Saturday. On Friday, he posted videos of what he said was a missile attack on the city’s two largest universities and denounced Russia as “a terrorist state.”
In Odesa, a key port city on the Black Sea, a Russian missile hit a warehouse, engulfing it in flames and sending up a plume of black smoke; no injuries were reported, local officials said.
Two people were killed and one hospitalized after a Russian rocket strike on the eastern riverside city of Nikopol, emergency services said. A five-story apartment block, a school and a vocational school building were damaged, according to the regional governor.
On Friday, cruise missiles fired by Russian bombers struck Dnipro, a major city in southeastern Ukraine on the Dnieper River, killing at least three people and wounding 16, Ukrainian officials said. On Saturday, Russian defense officials claimed that the strike had destroyed “workshops producing components for, and repairing, Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as multiple rocket launchers.”
The Ukrainian air force said Russian forces fired six more cruise missiles Saturday from strategic bombers in the Caspian Sea, and two hit a farm in the Cherkasy region along the Dnieper River. No people were hurt, but agricultural equipment was destroyed and cattle were killed, regional Gov. Ihor Taburets said. The Ukrainian air force said the other four missiles were intercepted.
The deadliest Russian attack in the last week came Thursday, when a missile strike killed at least 24 people and wounded more than 200 in Vinnytsia, southwest of Kyiv, far from the front lines. Russia said the Kalibr cruise missiles hit a “military facility” that was hosting a meeting between Ukrainian air force command and foreign weapons suppliers. Ukrainian authorities said the site had nothing to do with the military.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said Friday that Russian forces had conducted more than 17,000 strikes on civilian targets in the course of the war, killing thousands and driving millions from their homes.