Susie Blann, The Associated Press Published Tuesday, July 19, 2022 at 6:57 AM EDT Last Updated on Tuesday, July 19, 2022 11:13 PM EDT
Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russian missiles hit towns and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, hitting homes, a school and a community center on Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin gained strong support of Iran for the military operation of his country.
In Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk, considered a likely target of Russian occupation, one person was killed and 10 were injured in an airstrike that hit an apartment building five-story said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Fresh blood stained the concrete amid green leaves that were ripped from the trees as they burned nearby apartments on at least two floors. The shrapnel was placed in a small pile near an empty playground.
“There was no one here. Everything is ruined, “said Halyna Maydannyk, a resident of a burned-out apartment.” Who knows why they do this? We were all living in peace. “
Kramatorsk residents Mykola Zavodovskyi and Tetiana Zavodovski were bandaged outside a hospital. They heard a loud applause and went to their balcony to investigate, then everything exploded and the windows shattered.
“It was probably a rocket, and it was probably shot down by Ukrainian forces,” Zavodovska said.
The noon strike came after Kyrylenko had reported four previous Russian attacks on Kramatorsk and urged civilians to evacuate.
In the political arena, Putin visited Tehran, where Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said the West opposes an “independent and strong” Russia. Khamenei said that if Russia had not sent troops to Ukraine, it would have faced a NATO attack, echoing Putin’s rhetoric and reflecting ever closer ties between Moscow and Tehran, as both they face severe Western sanctions. NATO allies have strengthened their military presence in Eastern Europe and provided Ukraine with weapons to help counter the Russian attack.
Talks in Tehran also addressed attempts to unblock Ukrainian grain exports, a problem that is causing global shortages and rising food prices. Putin told reporters after his meetings that Russia would help facilitate such shipments if the West lifted restrictions on Russian grain exports. He noted that “Americans have effectively lifted restrictions on the supply of Russian fertilizers to world markets,” adding that “if they sincerely want to improve the situation on the world food market, I hope they will do the same with exports of Russian cereals “.
In the Odessa region of southern Ukraine, Russian forces fired seven Kalibr cruise missiles overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks on the people of Bilenke achieved a legitimate military target and “destroyed ammunition depots for weapons supplied by the United States and European countries.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed Moscow’s claim and said six people were injured, including a 5-month-old girl.
“What did they hit?” Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address on Tuesday. “An ordinary rural field and a non-working farm, rural houses, outbuildings, a high school, a cultural center. No military sense. Only terror. “
With indications that Ukraine is planning counterattacks to retake occupied areas, in recent weeks the Russian army has targeted Odessa and parts of southern Ukraine where its troops captured cities before the war.
In the east, Ukrainian forces are fighting to keep the territory in decline under their control. Donetsk has been cut off from gas supply and partly from water and energy while the Russians try to complete their takeover of the province. Russia’s ground advance has slowed, partly because Ukraine is using more effective U.S. weapons and partly because of what Putin has called an “operational pause”. Russia has focused more on aerial bombardment with long-range missiles.
“The infrastructure of cities is being methodically destroyed by missile attacks, and the civilian population, cut off from the necessary necessities, is the one suffering the most,” Kyrylenko said.
Officials stationed by Russia in the southern region of Kherson, under Moscow’s control since the start of the war, said Ukrainian forces damaged the only bridge in the city of Kherson over the Dnipro River, in the east of Odessa. Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kremlin-backed administration in the Kherson region, told Russian news agency Interfax that Ukrainian forces used American-made rocket launchers to damage the bridge in an attempt to cut Kherson on the left bank of the Dnipro.
Ukrainian officials have spoken of plans for a counteroffensive to retake Kherson and other southern Ukrainian territories from the Russians.
Serhiy Khlan, an official of the Ukrainian administration in the Kherson region, tacitly confirmed the strike on Ukrainian television, reporting a “precise blow” and an explosion in the bridge area.
Also in the Kherson region, Ukraine claimed to have used anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet that had planned to attack its aircraft. Several terrestrial videos posted on social media showed a plane crashing into the sky on Tuesday evening near New Kakhovka, in flames and vomiting gray and black smoke as it descended and crashed to the ground, at least a few pieces against a green field. . Ukrainian news said the pilot was ejected and showed a helicopter looking for him. Russian officials did not immediately confirm the attack. Little information has emerged during the war about air battles.
Kherson, which hosts a major shipbuilding industry at the confluence of the Dnieper River and the Black Sea, near Crimea annexed to Russia, is one of several areas the U.S. government spokesman said Russia is trying to annex. se. After months of rumors and local announcements about a Russian referendum, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that U.S. intelligence officials have amassed new “extensive” evidence that Russia is formally seeking to annex more Ukrainian territory and could maintain a “farce.” public vote as early as September. Russia looks at Kherson as well as the entire Lugansk and Donetsk oblast.
“Russia is laying the groundwork for annexing the Ukrainian territory it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Kirby told Washington.
Kirby also said the White House is expected to announce more military aid to Ukraine later this week. The aid is expected to include more high-mobility artillery rocket system, or HIMARS, a critical weapon that Ukrainian forces have been successfully using in their fight to repel Russian troops.
On the ground, Ukraine and Russia continued their sporadic exchanges of bodies of fallen soldiers. Each side gave the other 45 corps of soldiers in the Zaporizhzhia region. Russia’s Ria-Novosti news agency said on Tuesday that soldiers had been killed in Mariupol, the city of the Sea of Azov that caught global attention due to a week-long siege at a steel plant.
At least two civilians were killed and 15 wounded by Russian bombings in Ukraine over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian presidential office said in an update Tuesday morning.
With Russia’s missiles hitting cities 799 kilometers (497 miles) away on Tuesday, “there is a high level of threat of missile attacks across Ukrainian territory,” said Oleksandr Shtupun, a state spokesman. Major of the Ukrainian armed forces.
The missile attacks came when the British army said it believed Russia was fighting to maintain its troop strength in its war of attrition that began with the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th.
The British Defense Ministry said in an assessment on Tuesday that Russia “has struggled to maintain effective offensive combat power since the start of the invasion, and this problem is likely to worsen more and more” as Moscow tries to conquer the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
The British military added: “While Russia can still make more territorial gains, it is likely that its operational pace and pace of progress will be very slow without a significant operational pause for reorganization and readjustment.”
In other news on Tuesday:
– Ukraine’s parliament approves the removal of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Ivan Bakanov as head of the country’s Security Service, SBU, and the Ukrainian leader on Tuesday ended the dismissal of Iryna Venediktova, who served as Attorney General of Ukraine. As part of the reshuffle stemming from the alleged collaboration with Russian authorities, Zelenskyy also fired six more SBU officials on Tuesday.
– The First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, visited Washington at the invitation of the First Lady of the United States, Jill Biden. Zelenska met Monday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who assured him of the U.S. commitment to Ukraine and praised his work with civilians dealing with trauma and other war damage. On Tuesday at the White House, Zelenska met with Jill Biden, hugging and posing for photos before discussing how the U.S. is helping Ukrainians suffering mentally and emotionally from the war.
Cara Anna contributed to this report from Kramatorsk.