(Kyiv) At least six people were killed and 17 injured on Saturday by Russian missile attacks on a postal depot in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine, local officials reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared a video on social media of what appears to be a badly damaged warehouse next to debris and a container bearing the logo of Ukrainian postal operator Nova Poshta.
The six people killed and the injured were “employees of the company who were inside the Nova Poshta terminal”, said the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegoubov.
PHOTO SERGEY BOBOK, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
“The victims, aged between 19 and 42, were injured by shrapnel and blast (from the explosions),” he added.
A total of 17 people were injured, the Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office announced on Sunday.
Earlier, Mr. Sinegoubov said that some of them were hospitalized in serious condition.
“Doctors are fighting for their lives,” he said.
Serguiï Nojka, an employee of Nova Poshta, said the strike had hit “the neighboring depot, but also ours – the windows and shutters flew away”. “It’s not the first time,” he said.
According to the regional prosecutor’s office, Russian forces in the Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, fired S-300 missiles, and two hit the warehouse.
“Analysis of the debris continues at the scene in order to establish the exact number of injured and dead,” office spokesperson Dmytro Tchoubenko told state media Suspilne.
In eastern Ukraine, the Prosecutor General announced on Sunday that two separate strikes had also caused the death of two people in the district of Bakhmut, a town which had been the scene of the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
Missiles to Crimea
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also affirmed on Sunday that Ukrainian positions were “protected” around the disputed town of Avdiïvka, in the east of the country.
However, he considered the situation “difficult”, mentioning “numerous attacks” from Russia in his daily message.
Avdiïvka, an industrial city almost located on the front line since 2014, has been targeted in recent weeks by intense attacks by Russian troops, who are seeking to surround it.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, spoke of “repulsed offensives”, particularly from the air, around Avdiïvka and several other towns in the Donetsk region.
It also claimed to have destroyed a guided missile and three drones launched by Russian forces.
For its part, Russia said it had shot down three Ukrainian missiles targeting Crimea, a peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow and regularly targeted by strikes by Kyiv’s forces.
“Three enemy missiles in the direction of Crimea were shot down” in the Kherson region at the end of the afternoon, Vladimir Saldo, installed by Moscow at the head of the occupied zones of this area of southern Ukraine, said on Telegram. Ukraine.
Earlier, an air alert was issued by the Crimean authorities, and traffic on the Crimean Bridge, which connects this peninsula to the Russian mainland, was temporarily interrupted.
Kyiv has been seeking for several weeks to bring the fight to this strategic zone for Russia.
The peninsula is at the heart of Russia’s military posture for its offensive in Ukraine, both to supply troops in southern Ukraine and to carry out missile strikes from the sea.