12 People Are Killed In Ukraine As Russia Attacks A Rebel-held Province

According to Ukrainian officials, during the past 24 hours, Russian bombardment in eastern Ukraine has resulted in at least eight civilian deaths and 25 further injuries. According to separatists who support Russia, Ukrainian army attacked and killed four people.

The Ukrainian presidential office reported that Russian forces attacked towns and cities in the southeast of the nation, with Donetsk province—where Russia has intensified its onslaught in recent days—sustaining the majority of civilian losses.

The governor of the province, Pavlo Kyrylenko, reported one civilian fatality in each of the Donetsk cities of Sloviansk, Krasnohorivka, and Kurakhove, as well as two fatalities in the province’s central city of Avdiivka.

He wrote, “Every crime shall be punished.

Late on Tuesday, Kyrylenko encouraged the more than 350,000 people still living in the province to leave, claiming that Donetsk needed to be evacuated in order to save lives and give the Ukrainian army time to better defend itself against the Russian onslaught.

The majority-Russian speaking industrial region of the Donbas, which includes Donetsk, is where the majority of the highly skilled Ukrainian soldiers are stationed. After Ukrainian troops left the final city they controlled, Luhansk, the other province in the area, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Monday that Luhansk was now fully under Russian control.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, disputed on Wednesday that the Russians had fully occupied the region. According to him, fierce battle raged on in the villages surrounding Lysychansk, which Russian forces seized on Sunday after Ukrainian army retreated from town.

“The Russians have paid a heavy price, but their force has not yet entirely occupied the Luhansk region, “added Haidai. “Some villages have already experienced multiple invasions by opposing forces.”

He claimed that Russian forces were using “burn down and destroy everything in their path” methods, such as scorched earth “.

Late on Wednesday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on social media that Ukrainian troops had repelled enemy formations moving towards Sloviansk in Donetsk, which is thought to be a possible strategic objective for Moscow.

For eight years, pro-Russian rebels have been at war with Ukrainian forces and in charge of the majority of the Donbas. Putin acknowledged the independence of the two self-declared separatist republics in the area before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

According to separatist authorities in Donetsk, 24 hours of Ukrainian shelling resulted in four civilian deaths and 14 more injuries. According to news reports, Tuesday’s shelling at an ammo storage resulted in enormous explosions.

Moscow has focused its effort on taking the last remaining Ukrainian-held parts of the Donbas after Russian forces failed to make significant progress toward capturing Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Russian forces also used missile attacks overnight to target Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, to the north of Donetsk, the regional governor of Kharkiv announced on Telegram on Wednesday.

According to Governor Oleh Syniehubov, three city districts were targeted. According to the governor, three people, including a toddler, were hurt, and one person died.

A building that houses military registration was hit by a missile. The adjacent government building was still standing, as nearby onlookers casually stared at the wreckage.

First responders crunched through the wreckage of another nocturnal attack at the national teaching institution in Kharkiv closer to the front line and in a more deserted area of the city. Dusty textbook pages flailed in the wind.

With the war dragging on into its fifth month, the attacks suggested the city, which is near to the Russian border, is unlikely to receive a reprieve.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, its forces attacked a camp housing foreign fighters in Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine and killed up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers while destroying four armoured vehicles in Kharkiv.

Igor Konashenkov, the ministry’s principal spokesman, said that two HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems that the US had given to Ukraine were also destroyed by air-launched high precision missiles.
In a Facebook post, the Ukrainian military refuted Moscow’s assertions, labelling them as “nothing more than a fabrication.”

In other developments:

— The 27-nation European Union, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, needs to prepare for a complete cutoff of Russian gas in the wake of Moscow’s conflict in Ukraine by developing emergency measures. The EU is looking for other sources of energy after already imposing sanctions on Russia, including on some energy supply. Von der Leyen, though, argued that the bloc needs to be prepared for unexpected disruptions from Moscow.

— The executive commission of the European Union received backing from legislators in a vote to include nuclear and natural gas to its list of sustainable activities. The EU was accused of “greenwashing” by environmentalists. The proposal’s potential to increase gas sales to Russia’s benefit was one justification for rejecting it. The European Commission claimed to have a letter endorsing its position from the Ukrainian government.

— According to Russian media, a court in Russia ordered the suspension of a pipeline carrying oil from Kazakhstan to Europe for 30 days due to what the court claimed were environmental problems. The findings of a recent inspection of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium were highlighted in the judgement by a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, stated to Charles Michel, the head of the EU Council, on Tuesday that his country is “ready to deploy its hydrocarbon potential in order to stabilise the situation on the world and European markets.”

— A senior Russian official expressed concern that the United States would incur the “wrath of God” if it aids in the creation of a global tribunal to look into Russia’s conduct in Ukraine. Russian Security Council deputy secretary Dmitry Medvedev criticised the US for trying to “spread instability and disaster over the world for the sake of true democracy.”