In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, June 5, 2023, a Russian self-propelled gun fires toward Ukrainian positions at an undisclosed location. Analysts say Moscow has learned from its mistakes so far in Ukraine and has improved its weapons and skills. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian missiles hit civilian buildings in a central Ukrainian city overnight, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than two dozen in a warehouse and an apartment building, regional officials said Tuesday.
The devastation in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, come as Ukrainian forces are in the early stages of a counteroffensive, more than 15 months after Russia invaded.
Russian forces have unleashed overnight missile strikes repeatedly against targets across Ukraine since late April, and Tuesday’s toll was among the highest from a single attack on a city since then. In late April, missile strikes hit an apartment building in the central city of Uman killed 23 people, including six children.
Images from the scene relayed by Zelenskyy on his Telegram channel showed firefighters battling the blaze as pockets of fire poked through multiple broken windows of the damaged apartment building. Charred and damaged vehicles littered the nearby ground.
“More terrorist missiles,” he wrote. “Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people.”
The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, wrote on Telegram that the bodies of seven people were recovered from the warehouse of an unspecified private company, and “another four destinies were cut short” at the apartment building. He said search operations had been called off after a final victim was found dead under the rubble at the warehouse.
Kryvyi Rih mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said on the social media app that 28 people were wounded.
The aerial assault was the latest barrage of strikes by Russian forces that targeted various parts of Ukraine overnight.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its military fired long-range air-launched cruise missiles at Ukrainian operational reserves and a depot with Western weapons and ammunition. It said all targeted facilities were hit.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was attacked with Iranian-made Shahed drones, and the surrounding region was shelled, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. The shelling wounded two civilians in the town of Shevchenkove, southeast of Kharkiv.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, separately reported early Tuesday that the drone strike damaged a utilities business and a warehouse in the city’s northeast. Neither Terekhov nor Syniehubov referenced any casualties within Kharkiv.
The Kyiv military administration reported that the capital came under fire as well on Tuesday, but the incoming missiles were destroyed by air defenses and there were no immediate reports of any casualties there.
Air defenses overnight shot down 10 out of 14 cruise missiles and one of four Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russian forces, Ukraine’s General Staff said on its Facebook page.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, told Ukrainian TV that its offensive operations were ongoing in four areas in the south and east: Near the town of Orikhiv in the southern Zaporizhzhia region; in the eastern Donetsk region near the city of Bakhmut and around the town of Marinka some 120 kilometers (75 miles) further south, and near Lyman in the Luhansk to the north.
The head of Ukraine’s ground troops said the country’s forces were “moving forward” outside Bakhmut. Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on Telegram that Russian forces are “losing positions on the flanks.”
For weeks, Ukrainian officials have been reporting small gains west of Bakhmut, which was largely devastated in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle before Moscow’s forces took control last month.
Over the last day, nearly a dozen frontline towns and villages in Ukrainian-held areas of Donetsk came under increased shelling as Ukrainian troops pushed forward, Zelenskyy’s office said.
Also Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry published a video showing what it said was a German-made Leopard 2 tank and U.S.-made Bradley fighting vehicle captured from Ukrainian forces. According to the ministry, the video was shot by Russian soldiers after fierce fighting in the southern Zaporizhzhia, and a soldier is seen pointing at the immobilized vehicles. It wasn’t immediately possible to verify the video’s authenticity.
Like the Bakhmut area, battle zones in Zaporizhzhia are one of several places along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line where Ukrainian forces have been intensifying their counteroffensive operations.
Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration for parts of Zaporizhzhia that Russia controls, alleged that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed, and told state news agency RIA-Novosti that Ukrainian forces “continue to suffer colossal losses when they make new attempts to advance.” He did not elaborate, and his claims could not be immediately verified.
On Monday, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the country’s troops recaptured a total of seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of eastern Ukraine over the past week, small successes in the early phases of a counteroffensive.
Russian officials didn’t confirm those Ukrainian gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war.
The advance amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.
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