By Cara Anna | The Associated Press
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces fired missiles and projectiles at Ukrainian cities and towns Saturday after the Russian military announced it would step up its attacks on its neighbor. Ukraine reported at least 17 other civilians killed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “instructions to further accentuate the movements of the sets in all operational areas, in order to exclude the launch of the Kyiv regime of large movements of rockets and artillery on the civilian infrastructure and citizens of settlements in Donbass and other regions. “his ministry said Saturday.
The Russian army’s crusade targeted east of Donbass, but the new attacks also affected spaces in the north and south. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s largest city right now, has witnessed violent shelling in recent days, with Ukrainian officials and local commanders fearing a full-scale moment. A Russian attack on the northern city is looming.
At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested ukrainians fall into the trap of Russia’s attempts to scare them with warnings of the horrific missile attacks ahead, which he said were aimed at dividing Ukrainian society.
“Sometimes data guns can do more than guns,” he said in his nightly video broadcast to the nation.
“It is transparent that no Russian missile or artillery will break our unity or divert us from our path” towards a democratic and independent Ukraine, he said. “And it is also transparent that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies. “or intimidation, falsifications or conspiracy theories. “
In the Kharkiv region, at least 3 civilians were killed and 3 others wounded saturday in a Russian pre-dawn attack on the city of Chuhuiv, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Border with Russia, police said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, deputy chief of the Kharkiv region police force, said 4 missiles believed to have been fired from the Russian city of Belgorod hit a building, a school and administrative buildings around 3:30 a. m. Writing on Facebook, he said the 3 bodies were discovered.
Lyudmila Krekshina, who lives in the construction she hit, said a husband and wife were killed, as well as an elderly man who lived in the flat.
Another resident said he was lucky to have survived.
“I was going to run and hide in the bathroom. I didn’t do it and that’s what he stored for me,” Bushuyeva said. Pointing to his destroyed apartment, he said: “This is the bathroom: explosion. Kitchen: half room And I did it because I stayed still.
In the neighboring Sumy region, one civilian was killed and at least seven wounded after Russians opened mortar and artillery fire on three towns and villages not far from the Russian border, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said on Saturday.
In the besieged Donetsk region, seven civilians have been killed and 14 wounded in the past 24 hours in Russian attacks on cities, its governor said on Saturday.
Later that day, on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a town in the Donetsk region, a woman said a neighbor was killed by a rocket attack Saturday afternoon. Tetiana Pashko said she herself suffered a cut on her leg and that one of her family’s dogs died. .
She said her 35-year-old neighbor, who died in his front yard, evacuated earlier this year as requested by authorities but returned home after being unable to do so on his own. Several houses on the quiet residential street were damaged, doors and roofs. they were torn away.
“We can rebuild, but we can’t bring it back,” said neighboring Olha Rusanova.
However, in the neighboring Luhansk region, Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian night attack on a strategic eastern road, Governor Serhiy Haidai said, adding that Russia had been taking the main road between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut for more than two months. . .
The Luhansk and Donetsk regions make up Donbass, an eastern trading region that fueled the Ukrainian economy and basically took over Russian and separatist forces.
In southern Ukraine, two other people were injured by Russian shelling in the town of Bashtanka, northeast of the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, according to regional governor Vitaliy Kim. He said Mykolaiv himself had been the target of new Russian gunfire earlier on Saturday. On Friday, he posted videos of what he called a Russian missile attack on the city’s two largest universities and denounced Russia as “a terrorist state. “
In Odessa, a key Black Sea port city, a Russian missile hit a warehouse, setting it on fire and emitting a plume of black smoke, but no injuries were reported, a local said.
Two other people were killed and a woman was hospitalized after a Russian rocket attack on the waterfront of the city of Nikopol, the emergency said. Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said a five-story building, a school and a vocational school were damaged.
On Friday, cruise missiles fired through Russian bombers hit Dnipro, a major city in southeastern Ukraine on the Dnieper River, killing at least 3 other people and wounding 16, Ukrainian officials said. On Saturday, Russian defense officials claimed the attack destroyed “workshops that generated and repaired parts for Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as several rocket launchers. “
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russian forces fired six more cruise missiles on Saturday from strategic bombers in the Caspian Sea, and two more hit a farm in the Cherkasy region along the Dnieper River. No one was injured, but the agricultural apparatus was destroyed and the cattle were killed. said regional governor Ihor Taburets. La Ukrainian Air Force said the other 4 missiles were intercepted.
This week’s deadliest Russian attack came on Thursday, when a Russian missile strike killed at least 24 people, added 3 children and wounded more than 200 in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv, the capital, far from the front. Three of those reported missing after the attack were discovered alive in the rubble on Saturday and one user remains missing, the emergency service said.
Russia claimed that kalibr cruise missiles hit a “military installation” hosting an assembly between the Ukrainian Air Force command and foreign arms suppliers. The Ukrainian government insisted that the site, a concert hall, had nothing to do with the army.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said Russian forces carried out more than 17,000 moves opposed to civilian targets of the war, killing thousands of fighters and civilians and driving millions from their homes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also spread to the world economy, driving up energy and food costs and curbing exports of key Ukrainian and Russian products, such as grain, fuel and fertilizer.