Drone footage shows Ukrainian village destroyed as residents flee Russian advance

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kyiv, Ukraine – The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been hit by fighting, drone footage obtained by The Associated Press shows. The village has been a target of Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

Russian troops have been advancing in the area, attacking kyiv’s depleted and ammunition-starved forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged that the Russians have gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says fighting continues.

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Residents have rushed to flee the town, including a 98-year-old woman who walked nearly 10 kilometers alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, to reach the Ukrainian front.

Not a single person can be seen in the images, and no buildings in Ocheretyne appear to have been left untouched by the fighting. Most houses, apartment blocks and other buildings appear damaged beyond repair, and many houses have been torn down into piles of wood and bricks. A factory on the outskirts was also severely damaged.

The images also show smoke billowing from several homes and fires in at least two buildings.

Elsewhere, Russia has in recent weeks stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an attempt to hit the region’s energy infrastructure and terrorize its 1.3 million residents.

Four people were injured and a two-story civilian building was damaged and set on fire overnight after Russian forces attacked Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine with explosive drones, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Saturday.

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All four, including a 13-year-old boy, were injured by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia’s state agency RIA reported Saturday that Moscow forces attacked a drone warehouse in Kharkiv that had been used by Ukrainian troops overnight, citing Sergei Lebedev, described as a coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas. His comments could not be independently verified.

On Saturday, another Russian strike hit a civilian business in an industrial district of Kharkiv, Syniehubov said. Initial reports indicated that four people were injured. In the Black Sea port of Odessa, which has been repeatedly attacked in recent days, three people were injured in a rocket attack on “civil infrastructure,” regional governor Oleh Kiper said.

Ukraine’s military said Russia launched a total of 13 Shahed drones in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of eastern Ukraine overnight, all of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said Saturday that overnight attacks damaged an electrical substation in the Dnipropetrovsk region, briefly depriving homes and businesses of electricity.

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According to Serhii Lysak, the province’s governor, drone debris damaged unspecified “critical infrastructure” and three private homes, one of which caught fire. Two residents, a man and a woman, were rushed to the hospital.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said early Saturday that its forces overnight shot down four long-range ATACMS missiles provided by the United States over the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The ministry did not provide further details. .

Ukraine has recently begun using missiles, secretly provided by the United States, to attack Russian-controlled areas, including a military airfield in Crimea and another area east of the occupied city of Berdyansk, US officials said last week.

The new missiles, long sought by Ukrainian leaders, give Ukraine almost twice the strike range (up to 300 kilometers) than it had with the medium-range version of the weapons it received from the United States last October.

A Ukrainian drone also damaged telecommunications infrastructure on the outskirts of Belgorod, a Russian city about 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, according to the local governor. Vyacheslav Gladkov did not say what the site was used for.

Hours later, Gladkov reported that five people in Belgorod were hospitalized, with shrapnel wounds and other injuries, after a strong explosion on Saturday that also damaged about 30 private homes and started two fires. He did not immediately clarify what caused the explosions.

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