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Russian troops have stepped up their fight, capturing one of the dwindling but yet-to-be-held cities in eastern Ukraine, while continuing to fire on towns and villages in the north and south of the country.
At least nine civilians were injured by Russian shelling that blew up balconies and windows in the southern area of Mykolayiv, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
A five-story apartment building and private residences in the town of Voznesensk were severely damaged, the governor of the Black Sea region said.
Vitaliy Kim wrote in a Telegram post: “As of 1:30pm local time, nine people were injured, including four children. All children are in serious condition. Ages ranged from 3 to 17 years old.”
He added that a young girl lost an eye in Saturday’s attack.
Reflecting the expanding frontline of nearly six months of war, Ukrainian airstrikes have hit targets in the largest Russian-occupied city in the southern Zaporozhye region, according to local officials backed by Ukraine and the Kremlin.
The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Melitopol said initial reports pointed to “precise strikes” on Russian military bases. The head of the Kremlin-backed government said the attack damaged residential areas and a civilian was slightly injured.
In a daily update, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said there was heavy fighting around Bakhmut, a small city that, if captured, Russia would threaten the remaining two largest in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian-controlled urban center.
Bakhmut has been the main target of Moscow’s eastern offensive for weeks as the Russian military attempts to complete a months-long campaign to conquer the entire Donbass, an industrial region bordering Russia and pro-Moscow The separatists claimed to be a pair of independent republics.
A local Ukrainian official reported ongoing fighting Saturday morning near four settlements on the border between Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which together constitute the disputed area.
Russian troops captured nearly all of Luhansk last month and have since concentrated on capturing the Ukrainian-held Donetsk region.
Russian shelling killed seven civilians in Donetsk province on Friday, including four in Bakhmut province, Governor Pavlo Kirilenko wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
Occupying Bakhmut would give the Russians room to advance the province’s main Ukrainian-held cities of Kramatorsk and Slovensk.
Slovensk and Kramatorsk, as well as the Kharkiv region in the north, are also home to Ukraine’s second-largest city, according to an update from the General Staff.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv commented on the airstrikes targeting Russian-occupied southern Ukraine’s Melitopol.
Earlier on Saturday morning, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that pro-Russian forces shot down near the city and a key power station in the Kherson region that the Russians occupied early in the war. Ukrainian shells.
The head of the Kremlin’s government in Melitopol confirmed that the city had come under Ukrainian fire.
Galina Danilchenko said on Telegram: “That night, the regime in Kyiv launched two attacks on the residential areas of our beautiful city of Melitopol. The Russian air defenses shot down the missiles, but due to the shelling, the residents of the (two) streets were left behind. The house was partially destroyed and damaged.”
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