Missiles, shells fired after Russian troops told to ‘further intensify’ efforts in Ukraine
Russian forces fired missiles and shells at cities and cities throughout Ukraine on Saturday after Russia’s army introduced it was stepping up its onslaught in opposition to its neighbour.
Ukrainian officers reported at the least 17 extra civilians killed.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “directions to additional intensify the actions of items in all operational areas, with the intention to exclude the opportunity of the Kyiv regime launching huge rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements within the Donbas and different areas,” his ministry mentioned Saturday.
Russia’s army marketing campaign has been specializing in the japanese Donbas, however the brand new assaults hit areas within the north and south as properly.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest metropolis, has seen particularly extreme bombardments in current days, with Ukrainian officers and native commanders voicing fears a second full-scale Russian assault on the northern metropolis could also be looming.
At the least three civilians had been killed and three had been injured Saturday in a pre-dawn Russian rocket strike on the northern Ukrainian metropolis of Chuhuiv, which is near Kharkiv and solely 120 kilometres from the Russian border, a regional police chief mentioned.
Serhiy Bolvinov, the deputy head of Kharkiv’s regional police power, mentioned the rockets partly destroyed a two-storey house constructing.
“4 Russian rockets, presumably fired from round (the Russian metropolis of) Belgorod at night time, at about 3:30 a.m., hit a residential constructing, a faculty and administrative buildings,” Bolvinov wrote on Fb. He mentioned the our bodies of the three lifeless civilians had been discovered beneath the rubble.
Within the neighbouring Sumy area, one civilian was killed and at the least seven extra had been injured after Russians opened mortar and artillery hearth on three cities and villages not removed from the Russian border, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky mentioned Saturday on Telegram.
Within the embattled japanese Donetsk area, seven civilians had been killed and 14 wounded within the final 24 hours in assaults on cities, its governor mentioned Saturday.
Later within the day, on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a metropolis within the Donetsk area, a lady mentioned a neighbour was killed by a rocket assault Saturday afternoon. Tetiana Pashko mentioned she herself suffered a lower on her leg and considered one of her household’s canine was killed.
Within the neighbouring Luhansk area, nonetheless, Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian in a single day assault on a strategic japanese freeway, mentioned Gov. Serhiy Haidai, including that Russia had been trying to seize the primary highway between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut for greater than two months.
“They nonetheless can’t management a number of kilometres of this highway,” Haidai wrote in a Telegram publish.
Russian missiles struck cities in central and southwest Ukraine removed from the entrance strains of the battle and Ukraine mentioned Canada’s determination to return generators utilized in a pipeline to hold pure fuel from Russia to Germany shall be seen as an indication of weak spot by Moscow. Right here’s a recap of the struggle in Ukraine from July 9 to July 15.
The Luhansk and Donetsk areas make up the Donbas, an japanese industrial area that used to energy Ukraine’s financial system and has principally been taken over by Russian and separatist forces.
In Ukraine’s south, two individuals had been wounded by Russian shelling within the city of Bashtanka, northeast of the Black Sea metropolis of Mykolaiv, in keeping with the regional governor, Vitaliy Kim.
He mentioned Mykolaiv itself got here beneath renewed Russian hearth earlier than daybreak Saturday. On Friday, he posted movies of what he mentioned was a Russian missile assault on the town’s two largest universities and denounced Russia as “a terrorist state.”
In Odesa, a port metropolis on the Black Sea, a Russian missile hit a warehouse, engulfing it in flames and sending up a plume of black smoke, however no accidents had been reported, native officers mentioned.
Two individuals had been killed and a lady was hospitalized after a Russian rocket strike on the japanese riverside metropolis of Nikopol, emergency companies mentioned. Dnipro’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, mentioned a five-storey house block, a faculty and a vocational faculty constructing had been broken.
The Ukrainian air power mentioned Russian forces fired six extra cruise missiles on Saturday from strategic bombers within the Caspian Sea, and two hit a farm within the Cherkasy area alongside the Dnieper River. Nobody was damage, however agricultural gear was destroyed and a few cattle had been killed, regional Gov. Ihor Taburets mentioned. The Ukrainian air power mentioned the opposite 4 missiles had been intercepted.
