Ukraine has denounced “deliberate Russian terror” and renewed calls for Western anti-missile systems after deadly strikes in the Odessa region, as kyiv forces face an “extremely difficult” situation in Lyssychansk, a city key in the Battle of Donbass.
According to the Ukrainian military and civil authorities, at least 21 people, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed before dawn on Friday by three Russian missiles which destroyed “a large building” and “a tourist complex” in Sergiyivka, a town on the Black Sea coast, about 80 km southwest of Odessa, in southern Ukraine.
“This is deliberate Russian terror and not a few mistakes or an accidental missile strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced late Friday evening, while local authorities assure that “there is no had not the slightest military target” at the location of the strikes.
In response to the Ukrainian accusations, the Kremlin assured that “the armed forces of Russia do not operate on civilian targets” in Ukraine, a reaction described as “inhuman and cynical” by Berlin.
According to kyiv, the strikes on Sergiyivka injured 38 people, including five children, two of them in serious condition.
“I call on our partners to provide Ukraine with missile defense systems as soon as possible. Help us save lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba pleaded once again on Twitter, calling Russia a “terrorist state.”
“Rockets day and night”
According to the Ukrainian army, the weapons used against Sergiyivka are Soviet cruise missiles dating from the Cold War and designed to strike a carrier battle group, the same type that struck a shopping center in Kremenchuk (center of the Ukrainian capital) in broad daylight on Monday. Ukraine, 200 km from the front) and having killed at least 19 people according to the last, still provisional, relief report.
Mr. Zelensky acknowledged that the situation remained “extremely difficult” in Lyssytchansk, an industrial city in the Donbass, where most of the fighting is concentrated and where the Russians “are trying to encircle” the Ukrainian army “from the south and from the south. west”, according to the local governor, Serguiï Gaïdaï.
In its daily morning update on the situation on the front, the Ukrainian General Staff affirmed on Saturday that “the Russians have carried out an offensive [vers une localité à quelques kilomètres à l’ouest de la ville]without success, and withdrew”.
Lyssychansk is the last major city not yet in Russian hands in the Lugansk region, one of the two provinces of Donbass, a largely Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine that Moscow intends to fully control.
About sixty kilometers further west, in Sloviansk, near the towns of Izium and Lyman already in the hands of Russian forces, a rocket attack hit inhabited houses on Friday evening, causing the death of a woman who was in her garden and injuring her husband, a neighbor told a journalist from Agence France-Presse on Saturday morning, showing the damage caused to buildings in the neighborhood.
The city’s mayor, Vadym Liakh, accused Russian forces of using cluster munitions, banned by international treaties to which Moscow is not a party. According to the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, four civilians have been killed and 12 injured in Sloviansk since Friday morning.
Sloviansk has been suffering day and night rocket fire for at least a week, hitting residential areas.
Further north, in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, “the morning […] was particularly turbulent,” said regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov, according to whom missiles hit a part of the city without causing any casualties.
Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said the Russian Air Force hit the local tractor factory in Kharkiv where troops and equipment from the 10th Assault Brigade were located. of Ukrainian mountain.
On the southern front, according to Konashenkov, the Russian army hit with artillery fire or airstrikes 39 command centers and two ammunition depots near Mykolaiv. The Ukrainian regional governor, Vitaly Kim, indicated for his part that explosions had been heard in the morning and that the authorities were trying to measure the consequences.
“Heavy Losses”
In general, Mr. Konashenkov said, “the enemy is suffering heavy losses on all fronts”.
Responding to Ukrainian demands for additional weapons, the Pentagon on Friday announced $820 million in new military aid for kyiv, including up to 150,000 155mm shells, new missiles for multiple rocket launchers American Himars, which recently arrived on the battlefield, as well as NASAMS air defense systems (American-Norwegian-made), capable of firing short and medium-range surface-to-air missiles.
Norway, for its part, announced aid in the form of a donation of some 960 million euros, which could in particular enable kyiv to buy weapons.
Faced with the maritime blockade imposed on it by Russia and which prevents it from exporting its wheat, Ukraine asked Turkey on Friday to intercept a Russian cargo ship leaving from the port of Berdiansk, in the occupied zone, and which it suspects to transport thousands of tons of grain stolen by Moscow.
As if to illustrate the issue of the grain war imposed by Moscow on kyiv and which worries many African countries depending on Ukrainian wheat for their food security, the Ukrainian army affirmed Friday evening, video in support, that the he Russian army had twice bombarded Serpents’ Island with phosphorus bombs. The Russian military did not comment on the charges in its daily press briefing on Saturday.
Close to the Ukrainian and Romanian coasts in the Black Sea, Serpents’ Island is essential for controlling maritime traffic.
Moscow had assured Thursday to have withdrawn as a “sign of goodwill”. kyiv, for its part, claims that the Russians were driven out by repeated Ukrainian strikes.