| At least 20 people have been killed after shelling struck an evacuation convoy in north-east Ukraine, officials said. |
At least 20 people have been killed including 10 children after shelling struck an evacuation convoy in north-east Ukraine, officials said.
Kharkiv region governor Oleh Syniehubov denounced the Russian attack on people who were trying to flee the area to avoid being shelled “cruelty that can’t be justified”.
The attack, in the Kupiansky district of Kharkiv, comes as Russian forces have retreated from much of the region after a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive last month.
But they continue to shell the city and its surroundings.
Ukraine's SBU security service confirmed on Saturday that 20 civilians had been killed in the "grey zone" between Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine in late September.
In a statement, it said that seven vehicles had been hit in the shelling between occupied Svatove in Luhansk region and Ukrainian-held Kupiansk which Kyiv recaptured in the Kharkiv region last month.
Russian-installed officials in Ukraine's east accused Kyiv on Thursday of shelling a convoy of refugees being evacuated from the Kharkiv region and killing around 30 civilians, Russian state media reported.
This comes as Ukrainian forces reached the entrance of the eastern bastion of Lyman on Saturday after encircling thousands of Russian troops.
It's a battlefield rebuttal to the Kremlin a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed a swathe of territory to be part of Russia.
The capture of Lyman would be a major setback for Russia after Putin announced the annexation of the Donetsk region, along with three other regions, at a ceremony in Moscow on Friday condemned by Kyiv and the West as a farce.
Two grinning Ukrainian soldiers taped the yellow-and-blue national flag onto the "Lyman" welcome board at the entrance to the town in the north of Donetsk region.
"Oct. 1. We are unfurling our state flag and establishing it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine," one of the soldiers said, standing on the bonnet of a military vehicle.
A spokesperson for Ukraine's eastern forces said Russia had 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman but that the number of encircled troops could be lower because of casualties.
"The Russian grouping in the area of Lyman is surrounded," the spokesperson Serhii Cherevatyi said on television.
Russia's last operational update was on Friday evening.
On Saturday, the ministry's Telegram channel published a series of congratulatory messages, including one from Putin, to mark an army holiday, Ground Forces Day.
