- Authorities say about 36 people have disappeared after the mall attack
- The situation in Lysychansk is very difficult – Governor Gaidai
- Zelenskiy urges the Security Council to expel Moscow from the UN
- Russia calls Zelenskiy’s speech a “public relations campaign” for weapons
- Turkey lifts veto on Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO
KREMENCHUK, Ukraine, June 29 (Reuters) – A Russian missile attack on Wednesday killed at least three people in a residential building in southern Ukraine, authorities said, while continuing the search for dozens of missing people in an attack on a mall two days ago. .
Eight missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv, including an apartment building, said Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych, just days after Ukraine said Russian missiles killed at least 18 people in a shopping center in the central city of Kremenchuk .
Mykolaiv photographs showed smoke coming out of a four-story building with the upper floor partially destroyed.
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Ukraine said Russia had deliberately killed civilians when it hit the Kremenchuk shopping center. Moscow said the mall was empty and had run into a nearby weapons depot. Read more
“The Russian missile hit this location with precision. De-li-be-ra-te-ly … It is clear that the Russian assassins received these exact coordinates,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video in the evening. “They wanted to kill so many people.”
Authorities said about 36 people were still missing in Kremenchuk.
Further east, in Lysychansk, in the Luhansk region, a key battlefield in Russia’s assault on the industrial heart of Donbas, the governor reported an increase in military action.
The situation in Lysychansk is similar to that of its twin city Sievierodonetsk more than a month ago, when the Russians began to take building after building, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Wednesday. Sievierodonetsk fell on Saturday in Russia.
“The Russians are using all available weapons … and without distinguishing whether the targets are military or not: schools, kindergartens, cultural institutions,” he said on television.
“Everything is being destroyed. This is a scorched earth policy.”
Russian forces are trying to surround Lysychansk, said on Wednesday the staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Russia has denied attacking civilian areas during its four-month offensive against Ukraine. The UN says at least 4,700 civilians have been killed since Russia invaded on February 24th.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region of eastern Ukraine, Governor Valentyn Reznychenko said the bodies of a man and a woman had been found buried under the rubble of an office of a transport company that was hit by a Russian missile on Tuesday.
Separately, Russian-based officials said their security forces had arrested Kherson city mayor Ihor Kolykhayev on Tuesday after he refused to follow Moscow’s orders. A local official said the mayor was abducted. Read more
The Moscow-imposed civilian and military administration in the Kherson region said it had begun preparations for a referendum to join Russia, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Kherson, a port city on the Black Sea, is located in the northwest of the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia.
In recent days, Ukrainians have also described attacks in the southern region of Odessa and Kharkiv in the northeast.
Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, told the Telegram application on Tuesday that Russia had fired about 130 missiles at Ukraine in the past four days.
The Russian invasion, the largest assault on a European state since World War II, has raised food and energy prices around the world and fueled global security concerns.
Finland and Sweden on Tuesday went one step further to join NATO’s Western military alliance in response to Russia’s actions, after Turkey abandoned its opposition to its membership. Read more
‘COLOSSAL ERROR’
Kremenchuk’s attack sparked a wave of global condemnation.
“We have run out of words to describe the absurdity, futility and cruelty of this war,” UN Political Affairs Chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council.
Although Kyiv said there were no military targets in the area, the Russian defense ministry said its missiles had hit a nearby weapons depot storing Western weapons, which exploded, causing the fire to explode. extended to the nearby Kremenchuk shopping center.
Moscow’s claim that the mall was empty was contradicted by injured survivors such as Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, who said she had been shopping there with her husband when the blast blew her up. head ahead “. Read more
Zelenskiy accused Russia of being a “terrorist state” at the United Nations and urged the Security Council to expel Moscow from the United Nations. Russia accused Zelenskiy of using the address as a “public relations campaign” for weapons. Read more
Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia, but so far have failed to reduce Moscow’s main source of revenue: oil and gas export revenues, which have actually risen with the threat of a disruption. supply that raises world prices.
The leaders of the Group of Seven nations have announced a new approach: to leave Russian oil on the market and impose a limit on its price.
The United States also imposed sanctions on more than 100 new targets and banned new imports of Russian gold, acting on commitments made by the G7. Read more
In a strange public questioning of Russia’s justification for the war by one of its richest men, aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska told reporters in Moscow, “I think destroying Ukraine would be a colossal mistake, even for us. ” Read more
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Reuters office reports; Written by Himani Sarkar and Stephen Coates; Edited by Himani Sarkar
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