Russian forces are attacking the city of Lisychansk and its surroundings in an all-out attempt to capture the last resistance stronghold in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province, the governor said on Saturday.
Ukrainian fighters spent weeks trying to defend the city and prevent it from falling to Russia, as neighboring Severodonetsk did a week ago. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had taken control of an oil refinery on the edge of Lisichansk in recent days, but Luhansk Governor Serhii Haidai said on Friday that fighting over the facility was continuing.
“In the last day, the occupiers have opened fire with all available types of weapons,” Haiday said Saturday on the Telegram messaging app.
Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk are the two provinces that make up the Donbass region, where Russia has focused its offensive since pulling out of northern Ukraine and the capital Kyiv in the spring.
Pro-Russian separatists have held parts of both provinces since 2014, and Moscow recognizes all of Luhansk and Donetsk as sovereign republics. Syria’s government said on Wednesday it would also recognize the “independence and sovereignty” of the two areas and work to establish diplomatic relations with the separatists.
In Slavyansk, a large city in Donetsk that is still under Ukrainian control, four people were killed when Russian forces fired cluster munitions late Friday, Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook. He said the affected neighborhoods contained no potential military targets.
Ukrainian police on Saturday released footage they said showed the aftermath of Russian missiles hitting Bakhmut, a town in the Donetsk region. The video shows people carrying another person on a stretcher, explosion craters, various damage and debris in the area.
Ukrainian police released this photo Saturday of debris and destruction in Bakhmut, about 55 kilometers southwest of the twin cities of Lisichansk and Severodonetsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. (Reuters)
The footage was released on the official YouTube channel of the Ukrainian regional police in Donetsk, where it said the footage was recorded in Bakhmut on Saturday.
Residential building hit near Odessa
Elsewhere, investigators searched the remains of a Russian airstrike early Friday on residential areas near the Ukrainian port of Odessa that killed 21 people.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said investigators were finding fragments of rockets that struck a residential building in the small coastal town of Sergievka. They also took measurements to determine the trajectory of the weapons, she said.
A damaged residential building is seen in the village of Sergievka in Odesa region on Friday after a Russian missile strike. (Irina Nazarchuk/Reuters)
“We are taking all necessary investigative actions to identify the specific persons guilty of this terrible war crime,” Venediktova said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said three anti-ship missiles hit an “ordinary residential building, a nine-story building” in which about 160 people live. The victims of Friday’s attack also included four members of a family staying at a “typical” coastal campsite, he said.
WATCH | Russian missile strikes kill at least 21 near Odessa:
Russian missile strikes kill at least 21 near Odessa
At least 21 people, including two children, were killed today by a Russian cruise missile strike near Odessa, Ukraine. The motive for the attack is unclear, but it comes after Ukraine achieved a recent military victory in the Black Sea.
“I emphasize: this is deliberate, direct Russian terror, not some mistake or an accidental missile strike,” Zelensky said.
Missiles do not have pinpoint accuracy
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that air-launched anti-ship missiles usually lack pinpoint accuracy against ground targets. According to him, Russia probably uses such missiles because of a shortage of more accurate weapons.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said the Russian military is targeting fuel storage sites and military facilities, not residential areas, although rockets recently hit an apartment building in Kyiv and a shopping center in the central city of Kremenchuk.
On Saturday, Kremenchuk Mayor Vitaly Maletsky said the death toll in the mall attack had risen to 21 and that one person was still missing.
Ukrainian officials interpreted the missile attack in Odessa as payback for the withdrawal of Russian troops from a nearby Black Sea island of symbolic and strategic importance in the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow described their departure from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” to help unblock grain exports.
About 130 kilometers east of Odessa, explosions rocked the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolaev on Saturday.
“There are powerful explosions in the city! Stay in cover!” Alexander Senkevich, mayor of Mykolaiv Oblast, which borders the vital Black Sea port of Odessa, wrote on the Telegram messaging app as the air raid sirens went off.
The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, although Russia later said they hit army command posts in the area.
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