Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said cluster munitions were blowing out windows and destroying balconies. “Mykolaiv was under massive shelling today. Probably the heaviest ever,” he said in a statement.
A CNN crew on the ground heard explosions from the strikes and saw fires that broke out in the bombing. Residents interviewed by CNN also said it was the heaviest shelling of the city since the start of the war.
At least one person was killed and two were wounded in the attack, according to Vitalii Kim, head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration.
In a speech to mark Russian Navy Day in St Petersburg, Putin made no mention of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but said the “current situation in his country demands very decisive actions”.
“We will provide protection firmly and by all means. The key here is the capabilities of the Navy, which is able to respond with lightning speed to anyone who decides to invade our sovereignty and freedom,” Putin said.
Putin said the delivery of the country’s Zircon hypersonic cruise missile systems will begin in the coming months. Russia said in May that it successfully test-fired the Zircon missile at a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).
Accusation of war crimes
Separately, at least three people were killed and eight wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine, according to the civil and military administration of Donetsk, which said villages in the region were targeted by artillery, Russian Grad missiles and Uragan rockets.
“11 private residential buildings and one high-rise building, a police station, a market, a canteen were damaged and three fields were burned,” the administration said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces were attacking front lines in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday asked remaining residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate urgently in what he called a “government decision.”
“Everything is being arranged. Full support, full assistance, both logistics and payment,” he said in his evening speech. “We just need a decision from the people themselves, who haven’t made it themselves yet.”
A strike at a prison in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine on Friday left at least 40 inmates dead. Olenivka prison near Donetsk has been used to house many of the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol a few months ago.
Britain’s ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, said the strike was part of a pattern of “the worst kind of human rights abuses” on Twitter on Saturday. “Olenivka needs to be investigated. It appears to be part of an increasingly troubling pattern of the worst kinds of human rights abuses and possible war crimes being committed with impunity in occupied eastern Ukraine,” the ambassador tweeted .
Zelensky said the attack was “a deliberate war crime by the Russians”.
Ukrainian intelligence said the attacks were carried out by the Russian mercenary group Wagner and were not coordinated with the Russian Defense Ministry. CNN cannot independently verify the allegations made by Ukrainian military intelligence.
Russia has blamed Ukraine for the attack.