At least 4 killed in Russian attacks on western Ukraine
Russian forces pounded western Ukraine with cruise missiles early Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 19 others – including a 10-year-old boy – in a bid to “sow panic and terror,” Kyiv officials said.
Tuesday’s deadly air strike was the largest on the Lviv region bordering NATO member Poland since the Russian invasion in February 2022, reported Ukrainian news outlets.
Swedish industrial bearings maker SKF said its factory in Lutsk in the northwestern Volyn region was hit by a missile overnight, killing three employees.
Several people were also hospitalized, Governor Yuriy Pohulyaiko said.
Video footage released by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed rescuers pulling a man from the rubble.
In the Lviv region, a half-dozen Russian cruise missiles battered some 120 residential buildings, a kindergarten playground and the local power grid, leaving 15 people wounded, regional Governor Maksym Kozytsky said.
The youngest victim was a 10-year-old boy.
“The children are very scared. They were hysterical, they were shaking. One of them even vomited from fear,” said Lviv resident Dmytro Ivaschyshyn outside an apartment block as firemen searched through debris. “Thank God we are all alive.”
Both Volyn and Lviv are located hundreds of miles from the front line, where Kyiv’s forces are pursuing their slow-moving counteroffensive in the face of Russian resistance.
Lviv city had been mostly spared of Russia’s air attacks until July when 7 people were killed by a missile that struck an apartment building near the historic center.
Also Tuesday, a Russian attack on a food storehouse in the eastern city of Kramatorsk killed one person, said Oleksiy Kuleba, deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president, who described the barrage as an attempt “to sow panic and terror.”
In the central Cherkasy region, an airstrike left parts of the city of Smila without water and also damaged a medical facility.
In all, Russia fired at least 28 rockets into eight regions of Ukraine, of which 16 had been shot down by air defense systems, whose effectiveness was hampered by the missiles’ ability to repeatedly change course mid-flight.
Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said Ukraine would have a 100% kill rate if Kyiv was given the F-16 fighter jets it has long sought from its Western allies.
“The daily terror of the Russians has a single goal — to break us, our spirit to fight,” said Andriy Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. “This will not happen.”
Main sites of the Ukrainian counteroffensive
- Melitopol: Kyiv’s forces continued advancing toward the city of Melitopol on the Sea of Azov in the south. If Ukraine were to claw back Melitopol, it could bring it closer to breaking through the Russia-held land corridor linking the annexed Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia, splitting Moscow’s forces in two and cutting their supply lines.
- Zaporizhzhia: Intense battles raged in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where US officials said Kyiv has launched its “main thrust” aimed at retaking 20% of its occupied territory. While Moscow claimed to have repelled Ukraine’s attacks involving dozens of armored vehicles and inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv’s troops, the Institute for the Study of War reported that the Ukrainian offensive appeared to have broken through some Russian defenses.
- Donetsk: Ukrainian troops on Thursday recaptured the strategically significant village of Staromaiorske located in the Donetsk region south of a cluster of settlements along the Mokri Yaly river that Kyiv had seized at the start of the counteroffensive. Control of the village could open the way for Ukraine to push southward toward the coast.
- Bakhmut: Ukrainian forces were said to be “gradually moving forward” near Bakhmut in the east, where Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar claimed Russians were dying at a rate eight times higher than Ukrainians. Geolocated footage showed that Kyiv’s troops have made gains south of the town of Klishchiivka, and additional fighting was reported near the settlements of Kudriumivka and Andriivka.
Yermak added on his Telegram channel that the Kh-101 missiles that were launched at Ukraine overnight were built in Russia this year using foreign-made chips.
“Restrictions have already been put in place, but sanctions need to be strengthened to prevent Russia from obtaining critical components and manufacturing missiles,” he argued.
Elsewhere in Ukraine Tuesday, Zelensky visited the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia and met troops fighting in the counteroffensive, which so far has led to the liberation of a string of villages, but no major territorial gains.
Zelensky was shown in a video with senior Ukrainian soldiers examining a battlefield map at the frontline command point of the 46th separate airmobile brigade near the town of Orikhiv, the president’s office said.
“The president listened to reports by the commanders on the course of combat actions in frontline areas… and discussed the most problematic issues of their units together with the brigades and combatants,” a statement read.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference with military representatives of allied Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries outside Moscow, accusing the West of fueling the conflict “by pumping billions of dollars” into Kyiv and “supplying it with equipment, weapons, ammunition, sending their military advisers and mercenaries.”
“Everything is being done to ignite the conflict even more, to draw other states into it,” Putin fumed in a pre-recorded video statement.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that despite the West’s support of Ukraine, Kyiv’s forces “fail to achieve results on the battlefield.”
With Post wires.
Read the full article Here
