Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – A day after Moscow suffered a severe symbolic defeat with the loss of its Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, Russia’s defense ministry vowed on Friday to step up rocket attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged Russian military “deviations”. territory “.
The threat of intensified attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities accused Ukraine of injuring seven people and damaging about 100 apartment buildings by air strikes on Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Authorities in another Russian border region also announced Ukrainian shelling on Thursday.
Kyiv is gradually showing some signs of pre-war life after Russian troops failed to capture the city and withdrew to focus on a concentrated attack in eastern Ukraine, leaving behind evidence of possible war crimes. The renewed bombing could return the capital’s residents to shelter in subway stations and the steady howls of air raid sirens.
The Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed that any targets have been struck in Russia, and the reports of the Russian authorities cannot be verified independently. However, Ukrainian authorities say their forces fired missiles at a key Russian warship on Thursday. If true, the statement will be an important victory.
The cruise missile cruiser “Moscow”, named after the Russian capital, sank while being towed to the port on Thursday, after suffering severe damage in circumstances that remain controversial. Moscow acknowledged the fire on board, but not the attack. US and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the fire.
Moscow had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. If Ukrainian forces pull out the ship, Moscow is probably the largest warship sunk in battle since the Falkland Islands war. A British submarine torpedoed an Argentine naval cruiser called the ARA General Belgrano during the 1982 conflict, killing more than 300 sailors on board.
The loss of the Russian warship in an invasion now widely considered a historic mistake was also a symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regrouped for an offensive in eastern Ukraine after withdrawing from the Kyiv region and much of the north.
In a nightly address Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s people should be proud to have survived 50 days of attack when the Russian invaders “gave us a maximum of five”.
Zelensky did not mention “Moscow” by name, but while listing the ways in which Ukraine has defended itself against pressure, he mentioned “those who have shown that Russian warships can sail, even if they are to the bottom.” This was his only mention of Moscow.
News of the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of progress in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow forces have been fighting Ukrainians since the first days of the invasion of some of the war’s worst battles – at a terrifying cost to civilians.
The dwindling number of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol is opposing a siege that has trapped more than 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday that people were “starving” in the besieged city.
The mayor of Mariupol said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could exceed 20,000. Other Ukrainian officials said they expected to find evidence of atrocities committed against civilians, such as those found in Bucha and other cities outside of Kyiv after the Russians withdrew.
Mariupol City Council said on Friday that locals said they had seen Russian soldiers dig up bodies that had been buried in backyards and prevent new burials of “people killed by them”.
“Why the exhumation is taking place and where the bodies will be taken is unknown,” a statement from the council said in a statement to the Telegram.
The capture of Mariupol is crucial for Russia because it will allow its forces in the south, which emerged through the annexed Crimean peninsula, to fully connect with troops in the Donbass region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial center and the target of the impending offensive.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine. Russia has recognized the independence of two rebel-held areas in the region.
Although it is uncertain when Russia will launch a full-scale campaign, a regional Ukrainian official said on Friday that seven people were killed and 27 injured after Russian forces opened fire on buses carrying civilians in the village of Borovaya, near the northeastern city of Kharkiv.
Ukrainian law enforcement is working to establish the circumstances surrounding the attack, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesman for the district prosecutor’s office, told Ukrainian news website Suspilne.
Chubenko said Ukrainian authorities have opened criminal proceedings on suspicion of “violation of the laws or customs of war, combined with premeditated murder.” Allegations of an attack on civilian buses could not be verified independently.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that Russian strikes in the Kharkiv region “liquidated a group of mercenaries from a Polish private military company” of up to 30 people and “liberated” the iron and steel factor in Mariupol from “Ukrainian nationalists”. Allegations cannot be verified independently.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Defense explained that the damage to the Russian flagship in the Black Sea from the fire caused an explosion of ammunition stored on board. In addition to cruise missiles, the warship had anti-aircraft missiles and other guns.
The ministry did not say what could have caused the fire, but said the “main missile weapons” had not been damaged and the crew, which usually numbered about 500, had left the ship. It was not clear if there were any casualties.
Maxim Marchenko, governor of Ukraine’s Black Sea region of Odessa, said Ukrainian forces had hit Moscow with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.” Neptune is an anti-ship rocket that was recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design.
The missile launchers are mounted on trucks near the coast and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would put Moscow in range, based on where the ship was when the fire broke out.
Launched as Glory in 1979, the cruiser served during the Cold War and during the conflicts in Georgia and Syria and helped conduct research in peacetime with the United States. He carried nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
British defense officials said the loss of Moscow was likely to force Moscow to change the way the navy operates in the Black Sea. In a social media post Friday, the UK Department of Defense said the ship, which returned to operational service last year after a major overhaul, “played a key role as both a command ship and an air defense hub”.
Other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea have moved further south since the Moscow incident, a senior US defense official said on condition of anonymity to discuss domestic military assessments.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and claimed thousands of lives. The conflict killed huge numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It has also further raised prices in grocery stores and petrol stations, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that the war had helped the organization lower economic forecasts for 143 countries.
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Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
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