KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces are managing to “create real hell” in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland despite reports they have taken an operational pause, a regional governor said Saturday, as another Ukrainian official appealed to people in Russia-occupied southern regions to evacuate quickly “by all possible means” before a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Deadly Russian shelling has been reported in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Sergiy Haidai, said Russia had launched more than 20 artillery, mortar and rocket strikes in the province overnight and its forces were pushing towards the border with Donetsk region.
“We are trying to contain the armed formations of the Russians along the entire front line,” Haydai wrote on Telegram.
Last week, Russia captured the last major stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lisichansk. Analysts predicted that Moscow’s troops would likely take some time to rearm and regroup.
But “so far there is no operational pause announced by the enemy. He is still attacking and shelling our lands with the same intensity as before,” Haidai said. In a later publication, he claimed that the Russian bombardment of Luhansk had ceased because Ukrainian forces had destroyed ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called on residents of Russian-controlled territories in the south to evacuate so that occupation forces cannot use them as human shields during a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
“You have to find a way to leave because our armed forces are coming to de-occupy,” she said. “There will be a massive fight. I don’t want to scare anyone. Everyone understands all this anyway.”
Speaking at a press conference late Friday, Vereshchuk said an attempt to evacuate civilians to parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions was underway. She declined to give details, citing safety concerns.
It was not clear how civilians are expected to safely leave Russian-held areas as rocket strikes and artillery fire continue in surrounding areas, or whether they will be allowed to leave or even heed the government’s call.
The death toll in the war continues to rise.
Five people were killed and eight others wounded in Russian shelling on Friday in Siversk and Semigoria in the Donetsk region, its governor Pavlo Kirilenko wrote on his Telegram channel on Saturday.
In the city of Slavyansk, named as the next likely target of the Russian offensive, rescuers said they pulled a 40-year-old man from the rubble of a building destroyed by shelling on Saturday. Kirilenko said there were many people under the debris.
Russian rockets also killed two people and wounded three others on Saturday in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih, according to regional authorities.
“They deliberately targeted residential areas,” Valentin Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram. Kryvyi Rih mayor Aleksandar Vilkul said on Facebook that cluster munitions were used and urged residents not to approach unknown objects on the streets.
In northeastern Ukraine, a Russian missile strike on Saturday hit the center of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, injuring six people, including a 12-year-old girl, authorities said.
“An Iskander ballistic missile was probably used in the strike,” said the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. “One of the rockets hit a two-story building, causing it to be destroyed. Neighboring houses were damaged.”
The city has been targeted throughout the war, including several times in the past week. As survivor Valentina Mirgorodksaya nursed a gash on her cheek, first responders cautiously surveyed the building smashed in Saturday’s strike.
“I don’t know,” said Mirgorodksaya. “I just do not know.”
The mayor of Nikolaev, Oleksandr Senkevich, said in a Telegram post that six Russian missiles were fired at his city in southern Ukraine, near the Black Sea, but caused no casualties.
Russian defense officials said on Saturday that their forces destroyed a hangar of US howitzers in Ukraine, near the town of Chasov Yar in Donetsk province. There was no immediate response from Ukraine.
In other developments:
— Ukraine’s national police force said it was opening a criminal investigation into the alleged destruction of crops by the Russian military in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. In a post on Telegram, he accused Russian troops of preventing residents from putting out fires in fields and otherwise sabotaging the harvest.
“Due to the constant shelling, it is extremely difficult to put out (field) fires in the de-occupied territories, and in the occupied lands the Russians deliberately do not allow fires to be put out,” the police said.
— A civilian woman in separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine was wounded by shelling in the village of Irmino, according to military officials of the self-proclaimed, Kremlin-backed Luhansk People’s Republic.
— Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday that Russian forces in Ukraine are now armed with “obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” including MT-LB armored vehicles removed from long-term storage. The MT-LB entered service with the Soviet Army in the 1950s and does not provide the same protection as modern armored vehicles. The Russians have also taken Cold War-era tanks out of storage.
“While MT-LBS have previously been in service in support roles on both sides, Russia has long considered them unsuitable for most front-line infantry transport roles,” the British ministry said on Twitter.
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Associated Press journalists from across Ukraine contributed.
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