Russian missile strikes killed three people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson while fighting raged in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia again shelled the key town of Vuhledar, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was facing a difficult situation in Donetsk and needed faster weapons supplies and new types of weaponry, just days after allies agreed to provide Kyiv with heavy battle tanks.
“The situation is very tough. Bakhmut, Vuhledar and other sectors in Donetsk region — there are constant Russian attacks,” Zelenskiy said in a video address late on Sunday. “Russia wants the war to drag on and exhaust our forces. So we have to make time our weapon. We have to speed up events, speed up supplies and open up new weapons options for Ukraine.”
Photo: AFP
Three people were killed and six injured on Sunday by Russian strikes on Kherson that damaged a hospital and a school, the regional administration said.
Russian troops had occupied Kherson shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year and held the city until Ukrainian forces recaptured it in November. Since its liberation, the city has regularly been shelled from Russian positions across the Dnipro River.
Later on Sunday a missile struck an apartment building in the northeastern town of Kharkiv, killing an elderly woman, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Synehubov said.
A Reuters picture from the scene showed fire engulfing part of a residential building in the nation’s second-most populous city.
Russia on Saturday accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately striking a hospital in a Russian-held area of eastern Ukraine, killing 14 people. There was no response to the allegations from Kyiv.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement late on Sunday that Russian forces had shelled Bakhmut, the focus of Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, as well as Vuhledar to the southwest where fighting has intensified.
Ukrainian military analyst Colonel Mykola Salamakha told Ukrainian Radio NV that Russian troops were mounting waves of attacks on Vuhledar.
“From this location we control practically the entire rail system used by the Russians for logistics... The town is on an upland and an extremely strong defensive hub has been created there,” he said. “This is a repetition of the situation in Bakhmut — one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports.
Sunday’s civilian casualties came three days after at least 11 people were killed in missile strikes which were seen in Kyiv as the Kremlin’s response to pledges from Ukraine’s allies to supply battle tanks.
After weeks of wrangling, Germany and the US last week said that they would send Ukraine dozens of tanks to help push back Russian forces, opening the way for other nations to follow suit.
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