Russia says it has repelled more cross-border attacks from Ukraine while its aerial assaults on Kyiv killed another three people including a nine-year-old girl and her mother locked out of an air raid shelter.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had repelled three cross-border attacks on Thursday near the town of Shebekino, and it accused Ukraine of using what it said were “terrorist formations” to carry out attempted attacks on Russian civilians.
“The selfless actions of Russian servicemen repelled three attacks by Ukrainian terrorist formations,” the Russian ministry said. “No violations of the state border were allowed.”
The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a far-right paramilitary group of ethnic Russians that supports Ukraine, claimed to be fighting inside Russia.
“The second phase promised by the RVC’s commander has begun!” it said on Telegram, referring to a previous incursion, alongside images of fighters firing weapons and inside a building.
Ukraine denies its military is involved in the incursions into Russia’s Belgorod border region and says they are conducted by Russian volunteer fighters.
Moscow accuses Ukrainian “terrorists” of targeting Russia’s western border. Russian officials say the group of fighters is a proxy run by Ukraine.
The Belgorod region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Ukraine’s armed forces had repeatedly shelled Shebekino with Soviet-designed Grad 122mm rockets, setting alight a dormitory and damaging an administrative building.
At least nine civilians were injured, he said, with hundreds of children, women and elderly being evacuated. Unverified video showed a fire at a large building in Shebekino.
In Kyiv, Ukraine said it shot down 10 ballistic and Iskander cruise missiles in Russia’s 18th attack on the capital since the start of May. But a nine-year-old girl, her mother and another woman were killed when debris fell near an air raid shelter they had been trying to enter.
“The entrance was closed, there were already maybe five to 10 women with children,” resident Yaroslav Ryabchuk said. “They knocked loudly enough … They tried to enter the shelter, no one opened up for them. My wife died.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video message, said shelters “must be kept accessible. Never again should we see a repeat of the situation that occurred last night in Kyiv…”
This was “very clearly” the duty of local authorities “and if this duty is not fulfilled at the local level, it is the direct duty of law enforcement bodies to prosecute”, he said.
Condemning the Kyiv deaths, the UN rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said six children were killed and 34 wounded in May alone, with 525 dying since Russia’s February 24, 2022, invasion.
Zelenskiy said on Thursday he had received a strong show of support from allies attending a European summit in Moldova on the question of supplying fighter jets to Kyiv to help repel Russian forces. He did not give details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government claims to have annexed parts of east and south Ukraine in a “special military operation” to “denazify” its neighbour, protect Russian speakers and defend its borders from aggressive Western ambitions.
– AAP
