Ukraine: Russian attacks kill 10; U.S. condemns deportations
Russian missile strikes in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv killed at least five people, Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday, part of a series of artillery and missile barrages across the country in the past day that left at least 10 dead and dozens wounded in eastern and southern regions.
While Mykolaiv has repeatedly been the target of Russian fire in recent days, Russian missiles also struck the city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday, an attack that could signal Moscow’s determination to hold onto territory in Ukraine’s south as it aims to fully conquer the east. Ukrainian forces have stepped up actions in a bid to reclaim more territory in the south.
Also Wednesday, the top U.S. diplomat accused Russia of committing a “war crime“by forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men, women and children to Russia with the intention of changing Ukraine’s demographic makeup.
Some of the civilian deaths occurred in the Donetsk province, which is part of a region the Kremlin is intent on capturing. The city of Bakhmut faced particularly heavy shelling as the current focus of Russia’s offensive, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
In the adjacent Luhansk province, which Russian and separatist forces have all but conquered, Ukrainian soldiers battled to retain control of two outlying villages as they came under Russian shelling, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said.
Luhansk and Donetsk together make up the Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking region of steel factories, mines and other industries.
The Russians are “deliberately turning Donbas into ashes, and there will be just no people left on the territories captured,” Haidai said.
With Russia’s sights set on the east, the Ukrainian military has tried to reclaim a captured city in the south. More Ukrainian missiles rocked Nova Kakhovka, a city east of the Black Sea port of Kherson, on Wednesday night, a day after the Ukrainian military claimed to have used missiles to destroy a Russian ammunition depot there. Russia said a mineral fertilizer storage facility had exploded.
More ammunition depots were hit late Wednesday, regional officials said. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti, citing Russian-appointed officials in the occupied region, reported that Russian air defenses had intercepted five incoming Ukrainian missiles. Social media posts showed large firey explosions.
In the Russian attack on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, two cruise missiles hit a factory and wounded 14 people, Ukrainian
officials said. The regional governor posted a photo showing the rubble. The UNIAN news agency said the factory management had evacuated the staff to bomb shelters, which it said may have saved their lives.
Russian artillery also rained down in northeast Ukraine, where the regional governor, Oleg Syniehubov, accused Russian forces of trying to “terrorize civilians” in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, strongly condemned the “unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons“from areas in Ukraine that Russia now controls.
“Russian authorities must \?release those detained and?allow Ukrainian citizens forcibly removed or coerced into leaving their country the ability to promptly and safely return home,” Blinken said in a statement.
Blinken said an estimated 900,000 to 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens — including 260,000 children — have been interrogated, detained and deported to Russia, with some sent to
the country’s far east.
“Moscow’s actions appear pre-meditated and draw immediate historical comparisons to Russian ‘filtration’ operations in Chechnya and other areas,” the U.S. official said. “President Putin’s ‘filtration’ operations are separating families,?confiscating Ukrainian passports, and issuing Russian passports in an apparent effort to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine.”
Bliken cited mounting evidence that Russian authorities are detaining, torturing or “disappearing” thousands of Ukrainian civilians who Russia considers a threat because of their potential ties to the Ukrainian army, media, government or civil society groups. Some Ukrainians, according to reports, have been summarily executed. In other developments:
Ukraine’s emergency services agency said the death toll from a weekend Russian airstrike in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar rose to 47. Rescue crews continued searching for survivors Wednesday in the rubble of three apartment buildings hit by Russian missiles on Saturday.