Russian occupational authorities in southern Ukraine yesterday said that Ukrainian forces were subjecting the city of Novaya Kakhovka to “intense artillery fire” that had cut off electricity.
The shelling came the same day that authorities in Russian-annexed Crimea reported a drone attack on a fuel depot and as Kyiv prepares for a widely expected counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces.
Novaya Kakhovka is in the part of the southern Kherson region that Russia controls. It lies upstream the Dnipro River from Kherson, the regional capital from which Russia withdrew in November last year.
Photo: AFP
“Novaya Kakhovka and settlements around the district are under very intense artillery fire from the armed forces of Ukraine,” the city’s Russian-installed authorities said on Telegram.
Novaya Kakhovka fell to Russian forces on the first day of their offensive in Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.
On Friday, Russian strikes battered cities across Ukraine, killing 26 people, including five children.
The deadly attacks included a strike on a residential block in the historic city of Uman in central Ukraine, where Agence France-Presse journalists saw rescue workers extracting bodies from a destroyed residential building.
The barrage of almost two dozen missiles ended a weeks-long pause following the repeated Russian strikes that had aimed to paralyze Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter months.
On Friday evening, workers in Uman pulled the body of another child from under the rubble.
Authorities said Russian cruise missiles killed 23 people — including four children — in Uman.
Rescuers were using cranes to search for survivors among the remains of the multi-story housing block.
Russian missiles also hit the central city of Dnipro.
Authorities said the strikes in Dnipro killed a 31-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter while they slept. The young woman’s parents were hospitalized.
Separately, authorities in Kherson on Friday evening said that Russian forces shelled the village of Bilozerka, killing a 57-year-old woman and wounding another three people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the latest barrage and vowed a response.
“Only absolute evil can unleash such terror against Ukraine,” he said in his evening address.
Moscow said it had targeted Ukrainian military reserve units and that “all assigned objects were hit.”
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