The city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine was the target of massive Russian bombardment, probably “the strongest” since the start of the war, which killed a known grain entrepreneur and his wife, authorities said sunday.
“Mykolaiv came under heavy shelling today. Probably the loudest so far,” since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, city mayor Oleksandr Senkevych wrote on Telegram, saying “powerful explosions” were heard twice overnight Saturday night. see you on Sunday.
The governor of the region, Vitaliy Kim, reported two deaths, a couple of civilians, in these strikes.
They are Oleksiï Vadatoursky, 74, owner of the main Ukrainian cereal logistics company Niboulon, and his wife, Raïssa Vadatourska, who were at home at the time of the strikes, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
Millionaire and “hero of Ukraine”, Oleksiï Vadatursky was the 24e Richest Ukrainian on the magazine’s list Forbes in 2021. Before the war, his company exported grain to 70 countries.
Other strikes hit the regions of Kharkiv (east) and Sumy (north-east). Some buildings were damaged in “a series of explosions” in Kharkiv, announced the mayor of the second Ukrainian city, Igor Terekhov.
One person was killed and two were injured in the Sumy region which has been the target of “more than 50 strikes” in the past 24 hours, according to Governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, where Moscow is concentrating the bulk of its attacks, said three civilians were killed and eight injured in shelling on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday evening called on the population to evacuate the Donetsk region in the east of the country, whose cities are the target of deadly bombardments, to escape “Russian terror”.
“Hundreds of thousands of people and children are still in the areas of fierce fighting in the Donetsk region […] The more people who leave the Donetsk region now, the less the Russian army will kill,” he said, assuring that a government decision on the “compulsory evacuation” of the region had been taken.
A drone hits the Russian fleet
On the same day, an explosive device carried by a drone detonated at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on Sunday, injuring six people, officials said.
The explosion at the headquarters of the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, prompted the cancellation of Russian Navy Day celebrations.
The Black Sea Fleet press service said the drone appeared to be homemade. He described the explosive device as “low-powered”, but Sevastopol Mayor Mikhail Razvozhaev said six people were injured in the blast.
There was no immediate information on where the drone began its flight. Sevastopol, in the south of the peninsula, is about 170 kilometers south of Ukraine’s Kherson region, and Russian forces control much of the continental area along the Black Sea.
Fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine. The mayor of the port city of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, said one person died in Russian shelling that damaged a hotel and school buildings.
In the Sumy region of northern Ukraine, near the Russian border, shelling killed one person, the regional administration said.
Three people died in attacks in the Donetsk region, which is partly under the control of Russian separatist forces, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Sevastopol on high alert
The Russian authorities have decreed the “yellow” (intermediate) level of anti-terrorist alert after this rather minor attack in view of the images posted online by the governor of Sevastopol, which show broken windows on the ground.
“The Ukrainian-Nazis have decided to spoil Russian Military Fleet Day for us,” the governor wrote, using an expression commonly used by authorities and Russian propaganda to refer to kyiv forces. He said the festivities were canceled and asked residents of the city not to leave their homes “if possible”.
The Ukrainian Navy has hypothesized a pretext to cancel the planned festivities in Sevastopol for fear of a real attack.
” In reality, […] so as not to be humiliated in the eyes of the world by their fear of the Ukrainian military, the Russians ‘invented’ an excuse to cancel the celebrations,” she wrote on Facebook.
Ukraine, although partially invaded since February 24 and under the fire of Russian artillery and cruise missiles, inflicted several humiliations on the Russian fleet, first sinking its flagship, the cruiser Moskva, then retaking control of Snake Island, a strategic island facing the mouth of the Danube.
“The liberation of occupied Ukrainian Crimea will be done in another way, much more effective,” said Serguii Bratchouk, spokesman for the regional administration of Odessa (south), in a video on Telegram.
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated Russian Fleet Day away from Sevastopol, in Saint Petersburg (northwest), with a speech promising the arrival “in the coming months” of a new hypersonic cruise missile who “knows no obstacles”.
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