Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russian missile strikes on residential areas in a coastal town near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa killed at least 19 people on Friday morning, authorities said, a day after Russian forces withdrew from a strategic island. of the Black Sea.
Video of the predawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, located about 50 kilometers southwest of Odessa. The Ukrainian president’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers hit an apartment building and two camps.
“A terrorist country is killing our people. In response to battlefield defeats, they fight civilians,” said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian Security Service said 19 people were killed, including two children. He said 38 others, including six children and a pregnant woman, were hospitalized with injuries. Most of the victims were in the apartment building, Ukrainian emergency officials said.
The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday, a move that was expected to potentially ease the threat to nearby Odessa, home to Ukraine’s largest port. The island is located along a busy shipping lane.
Russia took control of it in the early days of the war in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odessa. The Kremlin described the departure of Russian troops from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” intended to facilitate shipments of grain and other agricultural products to Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
The Ukrainian military claimed that a barrage from its artillery and missiles forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats. The exact number of troops withdrawn was not disclosed.
The island rose to prominence early in the war as a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion. Ukrainian troops there reportedly received a demand from a Russian warship to surrender or be bombed. The answer allegedly came back: “Go (expletive) yourself.”
Zelenskyy said that although the withdrawal did not guarantee the security of the Black Sea region, it would “significantly limit” Russian activities there.
“Step by step, we will get (Russia) out of our sea, our land, our sky,” he said in his late-night speech.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces maintained their momentum to encircle the last resistance stronghold in Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the country’s Donbas region. Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the region for eight years.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were trying to encircle the city of Lysychansk and fighting for control of an oil refinery on the outskirts of the city.
“The shelling of the city is very intense,” Haidai told The Associated Press. “The occupiers are destroying one house after another with heavy artillery and other weapons. Lysychansk residents hide in basements almost all day.
The offensive has so far failed to cut Ukraine’s supply lines, although the main road leading west was not being used due to constant Russian bombardment, the governor said. “Evacuation is impossible,” he added.
But Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday that Russian and Luhansk separatist forces had taken control of the refinery, as well as a mine and a gelatin factory in Lysychansk “over the past three days.” .
Ukraine’s presidential office said a series of Russian strikes in the past 24 hours have also killed civilians in eastern Ukraine: four in the northeastern Kharkiv region and another four in Donetsk province.
Russian bombing killed large numbers of civilians early in the war, including in a hospital and theater in the port city of Mariupol. Mass casualties seemed to become less frequent as Moscow concentrated on capturing the Donbas region.
However, a missile attack on Monday at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, a city in central Ukraine, killed at least 19 people and wounded 62 others, authorities said on Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denied on Thursday that Russian forces had attacked the mall and said his country does not attack civilian facilities. He claimed that the target in Kremenchuk was a nearby weapons depot, echoing military officials’ comments about him.
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