War in Ukraine, day 784 | Eleven dead in triple Russian strike on major northern city

(Kyiv) At least 11 people were killed in a triple Russian strike on Wednesday in Cherniguiv, a large city in northern Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky once again blaming the lack of aid from the West.

“Eleven dead, 22 injured at this stage,” said Interior Minister Igor Klimenko. A toll that risks increasing, with “at least” three people missing and the search still underway.

President Zelensky estimated that Ukraine did not have enough air defenses to prevent this attack, one of the deadliest against this city located about sixty kilometers from the border with Belarus, an ally of Russia, and a hundred kilometers from Kyiv.

“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient,” the Ukrainian leader insisted on Telegram.

Because Russia bombards Ukrainian cities daily with explosive missiles and drones, particularly its energy infrastructure.

Faced with Western aid, particularly American aid, which is running out of steam, Ukraine is experiencing a growing lack of means to intercept these devices.

It is desperately urging its partners to deliver more weapons and air defense systems.

The reluctance of the allies has particularly frustrated Kyiv after an Iranian air attack on Israel this weekend was successfully repelled thanks in particular to Western military support while a crucial envelope of American aid has been blocked for months in Congress.

President Zelensky cited the example of a large thermal power station near Kyiv, completely destroyed by Russian missiles on April 11 due, according to him, to a lack of ammunition for the anti-aircraft defense supposed to cover it.

Russian base attacked in Crimea

“There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed seven of them. The remaining four destroyed the Trypillia power plant. For what ? Because we had zero rockets. We were running out of rockets to protect Trypillia,” he said in an interview published Tuesday.

In Cherniguiv, “three explosions occurred” at 9:03 a.m. local time (3:03 a.m. Eastern time), the mayor said earlier in the day on television. It was a “direct strike on a social infrastructure building”.

Ukraine’s Health Ministry said a health facility was damaged. Six people were hospitalized, he added on Telegram.

The governor of the eponymous region of which Cherniguiv is the capital indicated that the attack had “almost” affected the city center.

One of the oldest cities in Ukraine, founded more than 1000 years ago, Cherniguiv, had almost 300,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion in February 2024. It was heavily bombed by the Russian army at the start of this offensive. and part of his region had been occupied for several weeks.

On the Russian side, elsewhere, military bloggers and Russian media reported a Ukrainian strike, during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, on the Djankoi military base, in the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Alleged videos of the attack, posted on social media, show impressive explosions in the middle of the night.

According to the Rybar Telegram account, close to the Russian army and followed by hundreds of thousands of people, 12 ATACMS tactical missiles delivered to Kyiv by the United States could have hit the target, damaging equipment and a building, and “according to a high probability” were allegedly fired from the Kherson region.

Kyiv and Moscow have not yet officially commented.

Finally, the Russian site Mediazona and the BBC Russian service said they had now identified around 50,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

The Russian side does not communicate its losses. For his part, the Ukrainian president admitted in February the deaths of 31,000 soldiers.