The Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye, largely spared by the Russian offensive and refuge for people fleeing the besieged city of Mariupol, was targeted by strikes on Wednesday, including one of its stations, according to local authorities.
“Civilian sites in Zaporozhye were bombed for the first time,” regional governor Olexandre Staroukh said on Telegram.
“Rockets fell on the Zaporozhe-2 station area. According to the first data, no one was killed,” he said, adding that another rocket had fallen on the botanical garden.
Zaporozhye is the humanitarian corridor destination for the hundreds of thousands of residents of the port city of Mariupol, besieged by Russian forces.
The city is also located near a nuclear power plant bombed on March 4 and occupied since by the Russians.
The population of Zaporozhye lacks water and food, holed up in caves for days.
After a series of failures, for lack of a Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire, the evacuations however accelerated on Tuesday. According to the Ukrainian presidency, some 20,000 people were able to leave the city.
Located about 55 kilometers from the Russian border and 85 kilometers from the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, Mariupol is the largest city still in the hands of kyiv in the Donbass basin which includes the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The capture by Moscow of this port city, populated before the war by 450,000 inhabitants and located on the shores of the Sea of Azov, would be an important turning point in the invasion of Ukraine.
It would make it possible to make the connection between the Russian forces coming from annexed Crimea, which have already taken the ports of Berdiansk and Kherson, and the separatist and Russian troops in the Donbass.