Eleven dead in Russian attacks in the South and East

Airstrikes on a town in the Zaporizhzhia region killed seven people, including two children, on Saturday. Others, carried out on villages in the Donetsk region, left four dead.

Russian strikes against a town in the Zaporizhia region and villages in the Donetsk region, in the south and east of Ukraine, left eleven people dead on Saturday June 29, according to the Ukrainian authorities. “The Russians attacked the city of Vilnyansk,” in the Zaporizhzhia region, and “The enemy killed seven people. Two of the dead are children”regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on a social network. Ten people were injured and several buildings, including residential ones, were damaged, he added.

Vilnyansk is 29 kilometres (18 miles) northeast of Zaporizhzhia, the main regional city, which is under Ukrainian control. Russia claims to have annexed the Zaporizhzhia region, but while it occupies large swathes of it, it does not control it completely. Russia has attacked Zaporizhzhia and neighbouring cities several times since it began its offensive in Ukraine in 2022, but in recent weeks it has focused its efforts mainly on the east of the country rather than the south.

Ukrainian officials also announced that Russian attacks on frontline villages in the Donetsk region had left four dead. “In [le village de] Zarichne, Russians killed three people”, said Vadym Filachkin, Ukrainian governor of the Donetsk region, on social networks.

For his part, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General later announced that another person, a resident of the New York border village, “was also fatally injured.” New York has been under intense attack since mid-June as Russian forces advance toward the city of Toretsk.

These attacks come the day after another against the town of Dnipro, north of Zaporizhzhia. One person was killed and 13 others injured, Ukrainian police announced on Saturday. “Police have identified a woman killed in a missile attack on the city of Dnipro as a 76-year-old resident of a destroyed building,” according to a press release. There are also 13 injured “including an infant and a pregnant woman”.

In reaction to these new deadly Russian strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Western allies on Saturday to “accelerate” their arms deliveries to kyiv forces. “The decisions we need must be accelerated. Any delay in decisions in this war means the loss of human lives,” pleaded Volodymyr Zelensky, calling for the delivery of weapons to “destroy Russian missile launchers”.

At the same time, on Saturday, in Russia, a drone hit a house in the village of Gorodishche, a small village in the Russian region of Kursk, a few meters from the border with Ukraine. Five people died, according to the region’s governor.