Russian forces fired missiles and shells at Ukrainian cities and towns on Saturday after the Russian army announced it was stepping up its attack on its neighbor. Ukraine reported that at least 17 more civilians were killed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “instructions to further intensify unit actions in all operational areas, in order to rule out the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery attacks on infrastructure civilians and residents of settlements in the Donbas and other regions, “his ministry said on Saturday.
Russia’s military campaign has focused on the eastern Donbas, but new attacks have also affected northern and southern areas.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has suffered particularly severe bombing in recent days, with Ukrainian officials and local commanders expressing fears that a second large-scale Russian assault on the northern city is approaching.
People walk down a street as smoke rises into the air after the bombings in Odessa, Ukraine. (AP) Local residents are searching for documents of their friend injured in the rubble of an apartment house destroyed after a Russian bombing in a residential area of Chuhuiv, Kharkiv region, Ukraine. (AP)
At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians not to fall into Russia’s attempts to scare them with warnings about horrific missile attacks to come, which he said were aimed at dividing Ukrainian society.
“Sometimes informational weapons can do more than normal weapons,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation.
“It is clear that no Russian missile or artillery will be able to break our unity or get out of our way” towards a democratic and independent Ukraine, “he said.
“And it is also clear that the unity of Ukraine cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, falsifications or conspiracy theories.”
In the Kharkiv region, at least three civilians were killed and three more were injured Saturday in a Russian attack before dawn in the city of Chuhuiv, which is just 120 kilometers from the Russian border, police said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, the deputy head of the Kharkiv region police force, said four missiles fired from the Russian city of Belgorod hit an apartment building, a school and administrative buildings around 3:30 p.m.
Writing on Facebook, he said the three bodies were found under the rubble.
A local man walks in front of a crater and a damaged school after a Russian bombing in a residential area of Chuhuiv, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on Saturday, July 16, 2022. (Photo AP / Evgeniy Maloletka) (AP)
Lyudmila Krekshina, who lives in the apartment building that was hit, said they killed a husband and wife, as well as an elderly man who lived downstairs.
Another resident said he was lucky to have survived.
“I was going to run and hide in the bathroom. I didn’t get it and that’s what saved me,” Valentina Bushuyeva said. Pointing to her destroyed apartment, she said, “There’s the bathroom: an explosion. Kitchen – half room. And I survived because I stayed. “
In the neighboring Sumy region, one civilian was killed and at least seven were injured after Russians opened mortar and artillery fire at three towns and villages not far from the Russian border, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said.
In the stormed eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the last 24 hours in Russian attacks on cities, their governor said.
Later in the day, on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk region, a woman said a neighbor was killed by a rocket attack Saturday afternoon. Tetiana Pashko said she herself suffered a cut to her leg and one of her family’s dogs was killed.
He said his 35-year-old neighbor, who died in the front yard, had been evacuated earlier this year as requested by authorities, but had returned home after being unable to stay. Several houses on the quiet residential street were damaged, with doors and roofs torn off.
Tetiana Pashko, a 43-year-old resident, speaks in front of her damaged house, following a rocket attack on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, July 16, 2022. (Photo AP / Nariman El -Mofty)) (AP)
“We can rebuild it but we can’t take it back,” said another neighbor, Olha Rusanova.
In the neighboring Luhansk region, however, Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian assault overnight on a strategic eastern road, Governor Serhiy Haidai said, adding that Russia had been trying to capture the main road. between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut for more than two months. .
The Luhansk and Donetsk regions make up the Donbass, an eastern industrial region that used to boost the Ukrainian economy and has been occupied mainly by Russian and separatist forces.
In southern Ukraine, two people were injured by Russian bombing in the town of Bashtanka, northeast of the city of Mykolaiv, in the Black Sea, according to regional governor Vitaliy Kim. He said Mykolaiv herself suffered a new Russian fire before dawn on Saturday.
Deadly Russian bombings claim more civilian lives
On Friday, he posted videos of what he said was a Russian missile attack on the city’s two largest universities and denounced Russia as “a terrorist state.”
In Odessa, a key port city on the Black Sea, a Russian missile hit a warehouse, engulfed it in flames and sent a column of black smoke, but no injuries were reported, local authorities said.
Two people were killed and a woman was hospitalized after a Russian rocket attacked the city of Nikopol, east of the river, emergency services said. Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said a five-story apartment block, a school and a vocational school building were damaged.
On Friday, cruise missiles fired by Russian bombers hit Dnipro, a major city in southeastern Ukraine on the Dnieper River, killing at least three people and injuring 16, Ukrainian officials said. On Saturday, Russian defense officials claimed the attack had destroyed “workshops for the production and repair of Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as multiple rocket launchers.”
A dog named Rem, wounded by a Russian rocket attack, sits in the damaged courtyard of its owners on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, July 16, 2022. (AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty) (AP)
The Ukrainian air force said Russian forces fired six more cruise missiles on Saturday from strategic bombers in the Caspian Sea and two hit a farm in the Cherkasy region along the Dnieper River. No one was injured, but farm equipment was destroyed and some livestock were killed, regional governor Ihor Taburets said. The Ukrainian air force said the other four missiles were intercepted.
Russia’s deadliest attack this week came on Thursday, when a Russian missile attack killed at least 24 people, including three children, and injured more than 200 in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv, the capital, far from the front lines. Three of those missing after the attack were found alive in the rubble on Saturday and one person remained missing, the emergency service said.
Russia claimed that Kalibr cruise missiles hit a “military facility” that hosted a meeting between the command of the Ukrainian Air Force and foreign arms suppliers. Ukrainian authorities insisted that the venue, a concert hall, had nothing to do with the army.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry says Russian forces have carried out more than 17,000 attacks on civilian targets during the war, killing thousands of fighters and civilians and evicting millions from their homes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also affected the world economy, raising energy and food prices and reducing exports of key Ukrainian and Russian products such as grain, fuel and fertilizers.