Russian rockets hit the city of Lviv in western Ukraine on Monday, killing at least six people, Ukrainian authorities said, as Moscow troops stepped up infrastructure strikes in preparation for a full-scale attack in the east.
Clouds of thick black smoke rose over the city after a series of explosions shattered windows and caused fires. Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine have seen only sporadic strikes in almost two months of war and have become a relative refuge for people in parts of the country where fighting has intensified.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to “fight to the end” in strategically vital Mariupol, where the last known pocket of resistance in a seven-week siege was hidden in a sprawling steel plant covered with tunnels. Russia has repeatedly called on forces to lay down their arms there, but others ignored a surrender or die ultimatum on Sunday.
Lviv Regional Governor Maxim Kozitsky said six people had been killed and eight others, including a child, injured in four Russian missile strikes. He said three hit military infrastructure and one hit a tire shop. He said emergency services were fighting the fires caused by the strikes.
6 killed, 11 wounded
A hotel sheltering Ukrainians fleeing battles in the east was among the buildings badly damaged by rocket attacks at night, according to Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadoviy, who said six people had been killed and 11 wounded.
“The nightmare of the war has caught up with us even in Lviv,” said Lyudmila Turchak, 47, who fled the eastern city of Kharkiv with her two children. “There is no place in Ukraine where we can feel safe.”
People are taking shelter after an air raid siren sounded in Lviv on Monday, following earlier air strikes in the area. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Smoke is visible on the horizon after Russian missiles hit an area in Lviv on Monday. (Joe Redl / Getty Images)
Military analysts say Russia is stepping up strikes on arms factories, railways and other infrastructure in Ukraine to reduce the country’s ability to withstand a major ground offensive in Donbass, Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern industrial center.
The Russian military said the missiles hit more than 20 military targets across Ukraine during the night – including ammunition depots, command headquarters and groups of troops and vehicles. Meanwhile, artillery is said to have hit another 315 Ukrainian targets, with military planes hitting 108 Ukrainian troops and military equipment. Allegations cannot be verified independently.
Russia seeks to take Donbass
General Richard Danat, a former British army chief, told Sky News that the strikes were part of a campaign to “soften” Russia ahead of a planned ground offensive in Donbass.
Russia is seeking to take over Donbass, where Moscow-backed separatists already control part of the territory after its attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, failed.
A woman makes the sign of the cross while attending an Orthodox service on Palm Sunday at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Petros Janakouris / Associated Press)
“We are doing everything we can to ensure the defense of eastern Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an evening address to the nation on Sunday.
The impending offensive in the east, if successful, will give Russian President Vladimir Putin a much-needed victory to sell to the Russian people amid growing casualties in the war and economic hardship caused by Western sanctions.
The capture of Mariupol is seen as a key step in preparing for any eastern offensive, as it would liberate Russian troops. The fall of the city on the Sea of Azov will give Russia the greatest military victory in the war, giving it full control of the land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it took from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a major port and valuable industrial assets. .
Mariupol is a “shield defending Ukraine”
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hana Malyar described Mariupol as a “shield defending Ukraine”.
The city was reduced to rubble during the siege, but Russia estimated that several thousand fighters held the giant 11-square-kilometer Azovstal steel plant.
People pass by the tower of a destroyed tank in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters)
“We will fight to the end, to win this war,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmihal promised on Sunday on ABC this week. He said Ukraine was ready to end the war through diplomacy if possible, “but we have no intention of surrendering.”
Many civilians from Mariupol, including children, are also sheltered at the Azovstal plant, Mikhail Vershinin, the city’s patrol police chief, told Mariupol TV. He said they were hiding from Russian shelling and Russian soldiers.
There seemed to be little hope of a military rescue. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that other Ukrainian troops and civilians there were mostly surrounded. He said they were “continuing to fight”, but that the city was virtually non-existent due to massive destruction.
According to Ukrainian estimates, the ruthless bombing and street fighting in Mariupol killed at least 21,000 people. A maternity hospital was hit by a deadly Russian air strike in the first weeks of the war, and about 300 people were killed in the bombing of a theater where civilians had taken refuge.
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Approximately 100,000 people remained in the city from a pre-war population of 450,000 trapped without food, water, heat or electricity.
Footage from drones transmitted by the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti shows kilometer after kilometer of destroyed buildings. Rising streams of smoke rose from the steel complex on the outskirts of the city.
Torture Chambers in Southern Ukraine: Zelensky
Meanwhile, Russian forces have carried out airstrikes near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s military capabilities ahead of an expected attack on Donbass.
After the humiliating sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship last week in what Ukrainians boasted of as a missile attack, the Kremlin has vowed to step up strikes on the capital.
Ira Slepchenko, 54, is standing next to coffins, one of them with the body of her husband Sasha Nedolezhko, 43, during an exhumation of a mass grave in Mikulichi, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Emilio Morenati / Associated Press)
At least five people were killed in a Russian shelling in Kharkov, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Sunday, regional authorities said. The barrage crashed into residential buildings. The streets were littered with broken glass and other debris.
The mayor of Kharkov, Igor Terekhov, in a passionate address on the occasion of the Orthodox Palm Sunday, attacked Russian forces for not stopping the bombing on such a sacred day.
Zelensky called the Kharkov bombing “nothing but deliberate terror.”
Firefighters are working to put out a fire in a residential building following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Andrew Marienko / Associated Press)
Zelensky also called for a stronger response to what he said was the brutality of Russian troops in parts of southern Ukraine.
“Torture chambers have been set up there,” he said. “They are kidnapping representatives of local authorities and anyone who is considered visible to local communities.”
He reiterated his call on the world to send more weapons and tougher sanctions against Moscow.
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