(Kyiv) Two people were killed and five others injured in Russian bombings that targeted the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, its governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Sunday.
The city of Kherson was recaptured in November by Ukrainian forces in a counter-offensive, which led to the withdrawal of Russian forces that crossed over to the left bank of the Dnieper River.
“The enemy again attacked the residential areas of Kherson,” the governor said, on his Telegram account, saying the Russian army hit a maternity ward, cafe and apartment buildings.
“Last night, two people were killed by Russian shelling” in the region, the governor said, adding that electricity had been restored “to almost 90%” in the city itself and its surroundings.
He added that five other people were injured to varying degrees in the “45 strikes” which targeted the area with artillery, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and mortars.
Prior to their retreat in November, Russian forces destroyed the city’s basic utility infrastructure and have since repeatedly shelled Kherson.
In the Black Sea city of Odessa, emergency power cuts continued following Russian drone attacks, regional government spokesman Sergiy Bratchuk said on Sunday.
STRINGER PHOTO, REUTERS
Apartment buildings are without power during a power outage after critical civilian infrastructure was hit by Russian drone attacks in Odessa.
Authorities also said “water supply interruptions” had occurred due to power outages in parts of the city.
On Sunday, the governor of the Odessa region Maksym Marchenko said that electricity was “gradually” restored in Odessa, but that 300,000 people were without electricity.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 1.5 million people were left without power in the Odessa region after Russian strikes using Iranian drones.
Odessa was a popular holiday destination for many Ukrainians and Russians before Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based defense think tank, noted on Saturday that Russian forces had targeted vital infrastructure in southern Ukraine, using ” a significantly higher number of Iranian-made drones than in previous weeks.”
This could indicate that “Russia has recently received or expects to soon receive new drone deliveries from Iran”, according to the expert group.
Iran is accused by Western countries of supplying drones to Russia, accusations denied by Moscow.
Weapons production is accelerating
The former Russian president and current number 2 of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Sunday that Moscow was manufacturing the “most powerful means of destruction” based on “new principles”, threatening to use them against the ‘West.
“Our enemy has not entrenched himself only in the Government of Kyiv (an administrative territorial entity of Imperial Russia, editor’s note) […] He is also in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and other places that have pledged allegiance to the Nazis of our time,” Medvedev wrote.
“This is why we are intensifying the production of the most powerful means of destruction, including those based on new principles,” he continued in a message posted early Sunday morning on his Telegram account.
He did not detail these new principles, but apparently made reference in particular to the new generations of hypersonic weapons that Moscow prides itself on actively developing in recent years.
The specter of nuclear war returned after the offensive in Ukraine in February, underscoring the erosion of the global security architecture dating from the Cold War.
Russian military setbacks in recent months have raised fears that Moscow is considering using its nuclear arsenal to reverse the trend.
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin put the risk of such a recourse into perspective by stressing that these weapons were “a means of defense” intended for a “retaliatory strike”.
On Friday, he also raised the possibility that Russia would modify its military doctrine by introducing the possibility of a preventive strike to disarm an enemy.
The US State Department has condemned these latest statements, saying “any discussion, however vague, of nuclear weapons is absolutely irresponsible. »
Ukrainian strikes on Melitopol
Ukrainian forces attacked the Russian-occupied town of Melitopol (southern Ukraine) on Saturday evening, pro-Russian official sources and others loyal to Kyiv said.
This strategic city, which had just over 150,000 inhabitants before the war, is located in the region of Zaporijjia, which Moscow claims to be annexed.
The two sides provided contradictory information on the targets of the strikes and the casualties, which AFP was not immediately able to verify.
According to Yevgeny Balitsky, Russian-appointed leader of the Zaporizhia region, Ukrainian forces used US HIMARS long-range rocket launchers to strike Melitopol around 9 p.m. Saturday.
The attack, he said, destroyed a “recreation center” on the outskirts of the town, killing two people and injuring ten others. The place was reached when people were dining, he said.
Two rockets were destroyed in flight, and four others hit their target, the official added.
Another pro-Russian regional official, Vladimir Rogov, released a photo of a major fire ravaging the “recreation center”.
Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the city he had to flee against the Russians, said for his part that the Ukrainian forces killed dozens of “invaders” by hitting the city.
No comment was immediately available from the Ukrainian military.
HIMARS rocket launchers played a major role in the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Russian troops captured Melitopol at the start of their offensive launched on February 24.