At least 19 people were killed early Friday morning in a new wave of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities, as kyiv says the preparatory phase of its major counter-offensive is coming to an end.
“Preparations are coming to an end,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said of the major attack his country wants to launch to recapture territories occupied in the east and south by Russia.
“The equipment has been promised, prepared and partially delivered. In a broad sense, we are ready,” he said during a press conference. “When God wills it, (when there is) the weather and the decision of commanders, we will do it”.
A few hours earlier, several Russian cruise missile strikes, the first on a large scale since early March, hit apartment buildings, killing at least 17 people in Uman and two in Dnipro.
“Every attack, every evil act against our country and (our) people brings the terrorist state closer to failure and punishment,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted on Telegram, demanding an international “response” to the “ Russian terror.
Russia, for its part, claimed to have bombarded “temporary deployment points of the reserve units of the Ukrainian armed forces” with “high-precision weapons”.
“All assigned targets have been hit,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
In Ouman, a city of 80,000 inhabitants, AFP journalists saw an apartment building ripped open by a missile, rescue workers taking out bodies and wounded people waiting for news of their loved ones.
“I want to see my children, alive or dead,” told AFP Dmytro, 33, a resident of the affected building. “They are under the rubble.”
“I was sitting in front of the computer and there was a powerful explosion,” he continues. Before adding: “I come from Luhansk (a city in Donbass under Russian control, editor’s note) and I have seen a lot of things but I have not yet lost my children”.
At least 17 people died in this building, according to the latest report from regional governor Igor Tabourets.
Among them, “two ten-year-old children”, lamented the governor on Telegram.
Dnipro and kyiv also targeted
Another Russian strike, on Dnipro, an agglomeration in central-eastern Ukraine, caused the death of “a young woman” and “a three-year-old child”, said its mayor Borys Filatov on Telegram.
In total, the Ukrainian army announced on Telegram that it had shot down “21 X-101 / X-555 type cruise missiles out of a total of 23 as well as two drones”.
The attack was launched “around four o’clock” from Russian strategic bombers of the Tu-95 type located in the Caspian Sea area, according to the same source.
These first missile fires on kyiv in more than 50 days did not cause damage or casualties in the capital, assure the authorities.
In Ukrainka, near kyiv, shrapnel from a downed missile fell on a building, injuring a girl who was hospitalized, the regional governor said.
For their part, the authorities installed by Moscow announced on Friday that seven people had died and more than 10 had been injured in strikes by Ukrainian forces on Donetsk, the main city controlled by the Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Expected counter-offensive
This winter, Russia had tried to plunge Ukraine into darkness and disarray, pounding its energy infrastructure, a strategy which however failed.
The prospect of an upcoming counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army, backed by powerful Western equipment, would bring the war into a new phase, after more than a year of high-intensity conflict.
For several months, Ukraine has claimed to want to launch a decisive assault to reverse the course of the Russian invasion and liberate the nearly 20% of its occupied territory – including the Crimean peninsula.
To help him, NATO member countries and their partners have provided the Ukrainians with 230 battle tanks and 1,550 other armored vehicles, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Thursday.
Some major weapons, however, will not be available or usable, including the training of soldiers to use them, for many months.
Russia, for its part, has mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists.
Despite frontline support from paramilitaries of the Wagner Group, Russian forces are tirelessly breaking their teeth on Bakhmout, an eastern city they have been trying to take since last summer, the longest and bloodiest battle of this war.
For Moscow, it’s about claiming victory after several humiliating setbacks last year.
Kiev explains its strategy of attrition war in the area to limit as much as possible the possibilities for the Russian army to continue its conquest of Donbass, a large industrial basin in the eastern part of Ukraine.
A Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Marat Khousnulline, said Friday that he went to the center of Bakhmout promising to “rebuild” this city once conquered by Moscow.