POKROVSK, Ukraine –
Russian missiles hit industrial facilities in a strategic city in southern Ukraine on Sunday as Moscow continued its efforts to expand its gains in the country’s east.
Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said the Russian missiles hit an infrastructure and industrial facility in the city, a key shipbuilding center in the Southern Bug River estuary. There was no immediate information on the victims.
Mykolaiv has faced regular Russian missile attacks in recent weeks as the Russians have sought to soften Ukrainian defenses.
The Russian military has declared the goal of isolating the entire Black Sea coast of Ukraine up to the Romanian border. If successful, such an effort would deal a severe blow to Ukraine’s economy and trade and allow Moscow to secure a land bridge to the breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova, which is home to a Russian military base.
Early in the campaign, Ukrainian forces repulsed Russian attempts to capture Mykolaiv, which lies near the Black Sea coast between Russian-occupied Crimea and the main Ukrainian port of Odessa.
Russian troops have since stopped their attempts to advance on the city, but have continued to pummel it with regular missile strikes.
They also sought to reinforce their positions in the Kherson region near Crimea and part of the northern Zaporizhzhia region that they seized in the initial stage of the conflict, fearing a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The British Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Russia is moving personnel and equipment between Kherson, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia. He said that the Russians are also increasing their security measures around Melitopol.
He added: “Given the pressures on Russian manpower, the reinforcement from the south as the fighting for Donbas continues indicates the seriousness with which Russian commanders view the threat.”
For now, the Russian military has focused its efforts on trying to take control of the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine, Donbas, where the most capable and well-equipped Ukrainian forces are located.
Ukraine says its forces still retain control of two small villages in the Luhansk region, one of two provinces that make up Donbas, and are successfully fending off Russian attempts to advance deeper into the second, the Donetsk region. .
The Ukrainian Army General Staff said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops thwarted Russian attempts to advance on Sloviansk, Ukraine’s key stronghold of Donetsk, and other attacks elsewhere in the region.
During a visit to the front lines on Saturday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered “further intensification of unit actions in all operational areas.”
While concentrating on Donbas, the Russians targeted areas across the country with missile strikes.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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.
“It is clear that no Russian missile or artillery will be able to break our unity or divert us from our path” towards a democratic and independent Ukraine,” he said in his evening video address to the nation. “And it is also clear that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken. with lies or intimidation, forgeries or conspiracy theories.
On Thursday, a Russian missile attack killed at least 24 people, including three children, and wounded more than 200 in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of the capital Kyiv, far from front lines that had largely been spared from Russian bombardment. prior to. Three of those missing after the attack were found alive in the rubble on Saturday and one person was still missing, the emergency service said on Saturday.
On Sunday, family and friends attended a mourning ceremony for Liza, a four-year-old girl killed in a strike. The girl with Down syndrome was on her way to see a speech therapist with her mother in central Ukraine when the missile hit. Her mother, Iryna Dmytrieva, was among the dozens injured.
“He remembered that he was looking for his daughter and that Liza was already dead,” Iryna’s aunt, Tetiana Dmytrysyna, told The Associated Press. “Her mother was robbed of the most precious thing she had.”
In the Kharkiv region, at least three civilians were killed and three more wounded on Saturday in a predawn Russian attack on the city of Chuhuiv, which is just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Russian border, police said.
Lyudmila Krekshina, who lives in the apartment building that was attacked, said a husband and wife were killed, as well as an elderly man who lived downstairs.
Another resident said he 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 to her destroyed apartment, she said, “There’s the bathroom, the explosion. The kitchen, half a room. And I survived because I stayed put.”
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