KRAMATORSK, Ukraine –
Ukrainian authorities across the country reported new Russian missile attacks and shelling on Saturday that killed at least 16 more civilians, deaths that came after Russia’s top military announced it would intensify its attack on its neighbor.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “instructions to further intensify unit actions in all operational areas, in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive attacks.” with rockets and artillery against civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions.”
The new Russian attacks hit areas in the north, east and south of Ukraine. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has come under particularly heavy shelling in recent days, with Ukrainian officials and local commanders expressing fears that a second large-scale Russian assault on the northern city is looming.
At least three civilians were killed and three more wounded on Saturday in a pre-dawn Russian rocket attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chuhuiv, which is close to Kharkiv and just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Russian border. said a regional police chief. he said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, deputy chief of the Kharkiv regional police, said the rockets partially destroyed a two-story apartment building.
“Four Russian rockets, presumably fired from around (the Russian city of) Belgorod at night, around 3:30 am, hit a residential building, a school and administrative buildings,” Bolvinov wrote on Facebook.
“The bodies of three people were found under the rubble. Three more were injured. The victims are civilians,” added Bolvinov.
In the neighboring Sumy region, one civilian was killed and at least seven more were injured after the Russians opened artillery and mortar fire on three towns and villages not far from the Russian border, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said on Telegram on Saturday. .
In the besieged eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians have been killed and 14 wounded in the past 24 hours in attacks on towns, its governor said on Saturday morning.
Nearby, however, Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian night assault on a strategic road to the east, said Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Lugansk region. Haidai said Russia had been trying to capture the main road link between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut “for more than two months.”
“They still cannot control several kilometers of this road,” Haidai wrote in a Telegram post.
Russia’s military campaign has focused on the Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but Russian forces have also been hitting other parts of the country in a relentless drive to wrest territory from Ukraine and crush the morale of its leaders. troops and civilians
In southern Ukraine, two 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.
Kim said that Mykolaiv itself was also attacked again by Russia before dawn. On Friday, he posted videos of what he said was a Russian missile attack on the city’s two largest universities and denounced Russia as “a terrorist state.”
Two people were killed and a woman was hospitalized after a Russian rocket attack on the eastern riverside city of Nikopol, emergency services said. Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said on Telegram that a five-story apartment block, a school and a vocational school building were damaged.
On Friday, cruise missiles fired by Russian strategic bombers struck the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, killing at least three people and wounding 16, Ukrainian officials said.
At a regular news conference on Saturday, Russian defense officials claimed the attack had destroyed “workshops that produced components and repaired Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as multiple rocket launchers.” Spokesman Igor Konashenkov did not respond to Ukraine’s accusations that the attack had killed civilians.
The deadliest Russian attack this week occurred on Thursday, when a Russian missile strike killed at least 24 people, including three children, and wounded more than 200 in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of the capital Kyiv, far from the front lines.
Russia said the Kalibr cruise missiles hit a “military facility” that was organizing a meeting between the Ukrainian air force command and foreign arms suppliers. The Ukrainian authorities insisted that the site had nothing to do with the army.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Friday that Russian forces have carried out more than 17,000 attacks on civilian targets during the war, killing thousands of fighters and civilians and driving millions from their homes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also knocked on the world economy, raising energy and food prices and limiting exports of key Ukrainian and Russian products such as grain, fuel and fertilizer.