KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles pounded towns and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, hitting homes, a school and a community center Tuesday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin won strong support from Iran for his country’s military operation.
In Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province considered a likely Russian occupation target, one person was killed and 10 injured in an airstrike that hit a five-story apartment building, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said.
Fresh blood stained the concrete amid the green leaves that had been ripped from the trees as nearby apartments on at least two floors burned. Shrapnel was placed in a small pile near an empty playground.
“There was no one here. Everything is destroyed,” said Halina Maidannik, a resident of one of the burned apartments. “Who knows why they do this? We all lived peacefully.”
Residents of Kramatorsk Mykola Zavodovski and Tetiana Zavodovska stood bandaged in front of a hospital. They heard a loud crash and went to their balcony to look around, then everything exploded and the windows shattered.
“It was probably a missile and it was probably shot down by Ukrainian forces,” Zavodovska said.
The midday strike came after Kirilenko reported four earlier Russian strikes in Kramatorsk and urged civilians to evacuate.
On the political front, Putin visited Tehran, where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the West was opposed to an “independent and strong” Russia. Khamenei said that if Russia had not sent troops to Ukraine, it would have faced an attack by NATO, echoing Putin’s own rhetoric and reflecting the increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran as both countries face heavy Western sanctions. NATO allies have increased their military presence in Eastern Europe and provided Ukraine with weapons to help counter the Russian attack.
The talks in Tehran also touched on attempts to unblock Ukrainian grain exports, a problem that is causing global shortages and raising food prices. Putin told reporters after the meetings that Russia would help facilitate such supplies if the West lifted restrictions on Russian grain exports. He noted that “the Americans have practically removed 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 Russian grain exports.” .
In the Odesa region of southern Ukraine, Russian forces fired seven Kalibr cruise missiles overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes on the village of Bilenke achieved a legitimate military objective and “destroyed ammunition depots for weapons supplied by the United States and European countries.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky disputed Moscow’s claim and said six people were injured, including a 5-month-old girl.
“What did they hit?” Zelensky asked in his evening video address on Tuesday. “An ordinary village field and a non-working farm, country houses, outbuildings, a lyceum, a cultural center. No military sense. Just horror.”
With indications that Ukraine is planning counterattacks to retake occupied areas, the Russian military has in recent weeks targeted Odessa and parts of southern Ukraine, where its troops captured towns earlier in the war.
In the east, Ukrainian forces are struggling to keep the shrinking territory under their control. Donetsk has been cut off from gas and some water and electricity supplies as the Russians try to complete their takeover of the province. Russia’s land advance has slowed, partly because Ukraine is using more effective US weapons and partly because of what Putin has called an “operational pause”. Russia is focusing more on aerial bombardment using long-range missiles.
“The infrastructure of cities is being methodically destroyed by missile strikes, and the civilian population, cut off from the bare necessities, suffers the most,” Kirilenko said.
Russian-based officials in the southern Kherson region, which has been under Moscow’s control since the start of the war, said Ukrainian forces had damaged the city of Kherson’s only bridge over the Dnieper River, east of Odessa. Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kremlin-backed Kherson Oblast administration, told Russian news agency Interfax that Ukrainian forces had used US missile launchers to damage the bridge in an attempt to cut off Kherson from the left bank of the Dnieper.
Ukrainian officials have spoken of plans for a counteroffensive to retake Kherson and other southern Ukrainian territory from the Russians.
Sergey Khlan, an official of the Ukrainian administration of the Kherson region, quietly confirmed the strike on Ukrainian television, reporting a “precise hit” and an explosion in the area of the bridge.
Also in the Kherson region, Ukraine claims it used anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet that planned to attack its planes. Several ground-based videos posted on social media showed a plane disintegrating in the evening sky Tuesday near Nova Kakhovka, bursting into flames and spewing gray and black smoke as it descended and crashed into the ground, at least several pieces in green field. Ukrainian news reported that the pilot had ejected and showed a helicopter searching for him. Russian officials did not immediately confirm the takedown. Little information about aerial combat emerged during the war.
Kherson – host to a major shipbuilding industry at the confluence of the Dnieper River with the Black Sea near Russian-annexed Crimea – is one of several areas that a US government spokesman says Russia is trying to annex. After months of local rumors and reports of a Russian referendum, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that US intelligence officials had amassed “substantial” new evidence that Russia was seeking to formally annex additional territory from Ukraine and may hold a “mock” public vote as soon as September. Russia is looking at Kherson, as well as the entire Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Kirby said in 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 of the High Mobility Artillery Missile System, or HIMARS, a critical weapon that Ukrainian forces have been using with success in their battle to push back Russian troops.
On the ground, Ukraine and Russia continued their sporadic exchange of bodies of fallen soldiers. Each side gave the other 45 bodies of soldiers in the Zaporozhye region. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday that the soldiers were killed in Mariupol, a city on the Sea of Azov that has drawn global attention for a week-long siege of a steel plant.
At least two civilians were killed and 15 wounded by Russian shelling in Ukraine over the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said in an update Tuesday morning.
As Russian missiles hit cities 799 kilometers (497 miles) apart on Tuesday, “the threat level of missile strikes remains high throughout the territory of Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Stupun, a spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The missile strikes came after Britain’s military said it believed Russia was struggling to maintain its troop strength in its grueling war of attrition that began with the February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an assessment on Tuesday that Russia has “struggled to maintain an effective offensive combat power since the beginning of the invasion and this problem is likely to become more acute” as Moscow seeks to seize control of the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
The British Army added: “While Russia may still make further territorial gains, their operational pace and speed of advance is likely to be very slow without a significant operational pause for reorganization and re-equipment.”
Other developments on Tuesday:
— Ukraine’s parliament approved President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dismissal of Ivan Bakanov as head of the country’s Security Service, SBU, and the Ukrainian leader on Tuesday finalized the dismissal of Iryna Venediktova, who was Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. As part of the reshuffle stemming from alleged cooperation with Russian authorities, Zelensky on Tuesday also fired six other SBU officials.
— The first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska visited Washington at the invitation of the first lady of the USA Jill Biden. Zelenska met on Monday with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who assured her of the US’s commitment to Ukraine and praised her work with civilians dealing with trauma and other war damage. At the White House on Tuesday, Zelenska met with Jill Biden, hugging and posing for photos before discussing how the US is helping Ukrainians suffering mentally and emotionally from the war.
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Kara Anna contributed to this report from Kramatorsk.
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