Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russian forces are managing to “raise real hell” in the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine despite reports that they were taking an operational pause, a regional governor said on Saturday, while another Ukrainian official urged people in Russian-occupied southern areas to quickly evacuate “as much as possible”. means” before a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Deadly Russian shelling was reported in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Governor of the eastern Luhansk region Serhyi Haidai said Russia launched more than 20 artillery, mortar and rocket attacks on the province overnight and that its forces were pressing towards the border with the Donetsk region.
“We are trying to contain the armed formations of the Russians along the entire front line,” Haidai wrote on Telegram.
Last week, Russia captured the last major bastion of the Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lysychansk. Analysts predicted that it would probably take some time for Moscow’s troops to rearm and regroup.
But “until now, there has been no operational pause announced by the enemy. It continues to attack and shell our lands with the same intensity as before,” Haidai said. In a later post, he claimed that the Russian shelling of Lugansk was called off because Ukrainian forces had destroyed ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has called on residents of Russian-controlled territories in the south to evacuate so that the occupying forces cannot use them as human shields during a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“We have to find a way to get out, because our armed forces come to vacate,” he said. “There will be a massive fight. I don’t want to scare anyone. Everyone understands all of this anyway.”
Speaking at a news conference on Friday night, Vereshchuk said a civilian evacuation effort was underway for parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. He declined to give details, citing security considerations.
It was unclear how civilians were expected to safely leave Russian-held areas as missile strikes and artillery shelling continue in surrounding areas, or whether they would be allowed to leave or even heed the government’s call.
The death toll of the war continued to rise.
Five people were killed and eight more were injured in Friday’s Russian bombing of Siversk and Semyhirya in Donetsk province, its governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote on his Telegram channel on Saturday.
In the city of Sloviansk, named as the next likely target of Russia’s offensive, rescuers said they pulled a 40-year-old man from the rubble of a building destroyed by shelling on Saturday. Kyrylenko said several people were under the rubble.
Russian missiles also killed two people and wounded three others on Saturday in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih, according to regional authorities.
“They deliberately targeted residential areas,” Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram. Kryvyi Rih Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul claimed on Facebook that cluster bombs had been used and urged residents not to approach unknown objects on the streets.
In northeastern Ukraine, a Russian rocket struck the center of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday, injuring six people, including a 12-year-old girl, authorities said.
“An Iskander ballistic missile was probably used in the attack,” the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said. “One of the missiles hit a two-story building, leading to its destruction. Neighboring houses were damaged.”
The city has been attacked during the war, including several times in the last week. As survivor Valentina Mirgorodksaya cleaned a cut on her cheek, rescuers cautiously inspected the building destroyed by Saturday’s attack.
“I don’t know,” said Mirgorodksaya. “I just do not know”.
Mykolayiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych reported in a Telegram post that six Russian missiles were fired at his city in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea, but caused no casualties.
Russian defense officials said on Saturday that their forces destroyed a hangar housing US howitzers in Ukraine, near the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk province. There was no immediate response from Ukraine.
In other developments:
— Ukraine’s national police said it was opening a criminal investigation into the alleged destruction of crops by the Russian army in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. In a Telegram post, he accused Russian troops of not allowing residents to put out fires in the fields and of sabotaging the harvest.
“Due to the constant shelling, it is extremely difficult to extinguish (field) fires in the unoccupied territories, and in the occupied lands, the Russians deliberately do not allow fire extinguishing,” the police said.
— A civilian woman in separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine was injured in shelling in the village of Irmino, according to military officials from the Kremlin-backed, self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.
— The British Ministry of Defense reported Saturday that Russian forces in Ukraine are now armed with “obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” including MT-LB armored vehicles withdrawn from long-term storage. The MT-LB entered service with the Soviet Army in the 1950s and does not provide the same protection as modern armored vehicles. The Russians also pulled Cold War-era tanks out of storage.
“While MT-LBS have previously seen service in support roles on both sides, they have long been considered by Russia to be unsuitable for most front-line infantry transport roles,” the British ministry said on Twitter.
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Associated Press journalists from across Ukraine contributed.