At least 13 people were killed and more than 60 injured in a triple Russian strike on Wednesday in Cherniguiv, a large city in northern Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky once again blaming a lack of aid from the West .
“At this stage, 61 people including two children have been injured. 13 people were killed,” said the head of the city’s military administration Dmytro Bryjynsky.
A toll which risks increasing, “people are probably still trapped under the rubble of the partially destroyed building”, commented the State Service for Emergency Situations.
Three people were able to be taken out of the rubble and the rescue operation is continuing, according to the same source.
President Zelensky stressed that Ukraine did not have enough air defenses to prevent this attack, undoubtedly the deadliest against this historic city located about sixty kilometers from the border with Belarus, an ally of Russia, and about a hundred kilometers north of kyiv.
“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient,” the Ukrainian leader insisted on Telegram.
Because Russia bombards Ukrainian cities daily with explosive missiles and drones, particularly its energy infrastructure.
Faced with Western aid, particularly American aid, which is running out of steam, Ukraine is experiencing a growing lack of means to intercept these devices.
It is desperately urging its partners to deliver more weapons and air defense systems.
The allies’ reluctance has particularly frustrated kyiv after a massive Iranian air attack on Israel this weekend was successfully repelled, notably thanks to Western military support, while a crucial package of American aid to Ukraine has been blocked for months in Congress.
President Zelensky cited the example of a large thermal power station near kyiv, completely destroyed by Russian missiles on April 11 due, he said, to a lack of ammunition for the anti-aircraft defense supposed to cover it.
“There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed seven of them. The remaining four destroyed the Trypillia power plant. For what ? Because we had zero rockets. We were running out of rockets to protect Trypillia,” he said in an interview published Tuesday.
Russian base attacked in Crimea
In Cherniguiv, “three explosions occurred” at 9:03 a.m. local time, the mayor said earlier in the day on television. It was a “direct strike on a social infrastructure building”.
Ukraine’s Health Ministry said a health facility was damaged. Six people were hospitalized, he added on Telegram.
The governor of the Cherniguiv region said the attack had hit “almost” the city center.
Cherniguiv, one of the oldest cities in Ukraine, founded more than 1000 years ago, had almost 300,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion in February 2024. It was heavily bombed by the Russian army at the start of this offensive. and part of the region had been occupied for several weeks.
On the Russian side, elsewhere, military bloggers and Russian media have reported a Ukrainian strike during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday on the Russian military base of Djankoi, in the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Alleged videos of the attack, posted on social media, show impressive explosions in the middle of the night.
According to the Rybar Telegram account, close to the Russian army and followed by hundreds of thousands of people, 12 ATACMS tactical missiles delivered to kyiv by the United States may have hit the target, damaging equipment and a building. “With a high probability” they were fired from the Ukrainian region of Kherson.
kyiv and Moscow have not yet officially commented.
Media claims to have identified more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine
BBC Russian service and Russian website Media zone said Wednesday they had identified more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Their count, published in a joint investigation and finalized on April 7, 2024, comes from the exploitation of certain information, such as official press releases, information published in the media and social networks, or collected by going to observe the graves in cemeteries .
Neither Ukraine nor Russia has published a report on their losses since the start of the war and both media outlets warn that their count does not claim to be exhaustive.
At the end of February, kyiv estimated the number of soldiers killed at 31,000, while the Russian army has only communicated its military losses on very rare occasions and these figures are considered to be largely minimized.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday invoked “the law on state secrets” and “the special regime” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to justify the lack of official communication on military losses Russians.
Last August, the American daily New York Times, citing American officials, estimated Russian military losses at 120,000 dead. On January 29, in a written response to a parliamentarian, British Defense Minister James Heappey estimated Russian losses at more than 350,000 dead and wounded.
In their investigation, BBC Russian and Media zone looked in particular at the fate of prisoners recruited to fight on the front, a contribution “crucial for the success of (the strategy of) cannon fodder” of the Russian army, they note.
Tens of thousands of inmates were recruited in Russian prisons, in exchange for a promise of release, notably by the Wagner paramilitary group but also by the regular army.
According to the two media’s examination of a sample of more than 1,000 prisoners, half of those conscripted directly by the Russian army had died within two months of being sent to the front. Those recruited by Wagner (until February 2023) died within three months of their enlistment.
The two media also point out that more than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of the conflict “illustrating the enormous human cost of the territorial gains” obtained by Russia, particularly in the Donetsk region from January 2023, during the battle of Bakhmout in the spring of 2023, or even during the large-scale offensive launched last fall and which lasted four months to seize the town of Avdiïvka.