Russian strikes on a town in the Zaporizhzhia region and villages in the Donetsk region in southern and eastern Ukraine left eleven people dead on Saturday, according to Ukrainian authorities.
After these deadly strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Western allies to “accelerate” their arms deliveries.
“The Russians attacked the city of Vilnіansk”, in the Zaporizhzhia region, and “the enemy killed seven people. Two of the dead are children,” said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor on a social network.
Ten people were injured and several buildings, including residential ones, were damaged, he added.
Vilniansk is 29 kilometers northeast of Zaporizhia, the main regional city, under Ukrainian control. Russia claims to have annexed the Zaporizhia region but, although it occupies large areas of it, it does not completely control it.
Russia has already attacked Zaporizhzhia and neighboring cities several times since it began its offensive in Ukraine in 2022, but in recent weeks it has focused its efforts mainly in the east of the country rather than the south.
Ukrainian officials also announced that Russian attacks on frontline villages in the Donetsk region in the east had left four dead.
“In (the village of) Zarichne, the Russians killed three people,” Vadym Filachkin, Ukrainian governor of the Donetsk region, said on social media.
Ukraine’s 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.
Following these new strikes by Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Western allies on Saturday to “accelerate” their arms deliveries to kyiv’s forces.
“The decisions we need must be accelerated. Any delay in decisions in this war means the loss of human lives,” Zelensky pleaded, calling for the delivery of weapons to “destroy Russian missile launchers.”
The attacks came a day after another in the city of Dnipro, north of Zaporizhzhia, which killed one person and injured 13 others, Ukrainian police said Saturday.
“Police have identified a woman killed in a missile attack on the city of Dnipro. She is 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”.