Ukrainian officials said Russia launched dozens of missiles at infrastructure in Ukraine on Friday, forcing emergency nationwide power cuts amid freezing temperatures, killing and injuring people in their homes in the south.
Russian-deployed officials in occupied eastern Ukraine also reported civilian casualties in Ukraine’s two bomb attacks.
The latest Russian offensive comes after Ukrainian officials warned that Moscow is planning a new all-out attack early next year, a year after it launched an invasion that destroyed most of Ukraine but placed very little under Russian control.
Vitaly Kim, the governor of southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, said earlier on Friday that as many as 60 Russian missiles were seen heading towards Ukraine, while the governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, claimed that Russia had “attacked in a very big way”.
Russia has been launching missiles at Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure almost weekly since the beginning of October after a series of war defeats. Moscow says it’s part of a plan to disable the Ukrainian Armed Forces, while Kyiv claims it’s a war crime.
“A Russian missile hit a residence in Kryvyi Rih,” regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said on Facebook. “The staircase collapsed. Two people died. At least five people were injured, two of them children. All in the hospital.”
Russian troops are now trying to hold territory in the south and east, which is about a fifth of Ukraine. While neither side has released detailed reports on military casualties, front-line clashes are brutal, with many soldiers on both sides believed to be dead or wounded.
Russian-appointed officials said Ukraine’s latest bombing killed civilians in two places.
It was reported that 8 people were killed and 23 people were injured in the village of Lantrativka, a small settlement close to the Russian border, in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine.
Leonid Pasechnik described the attack as “barbaric”.
He said Ukraine is targeting residential neighborhoods, schools and commercial areas with the aim of “killing as many people as possible”. He presented no evidence and no immediate comment came from Kiev.
The head of the self-proclaimed separatist “people’s militia” in Luhansk said a civilian was also killed Friday morning as a result of Ukrainian shelling in the town of Svatove, about 70 kilometers south.
Reuters was unable to immediately confirm the latest reports from the battlefield, but recorded at least three explosions in the snow-covered capital, Kiev, which covered parts of the city with smoke. It was unclear whether any missiles had breached the air defense.
Ukraine has managed to repair most of its power infrastructure to restore electricity and water supplies, but each successive attack makes this task more difficult.
A senior Ukrainian presidential official said that emergency power cuts were initiated across the country.
source: Noticias
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.