Powerful explosions shook Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv on Saturday morning, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said. Air raid sirens sounded across the Mykolaiv region before the blasts and residents were urged to stay inside shelters. It was not immediately known what caused the explosions.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has accused Russia of engaging in “conscious, deliberately targeted terror” after another in a series of what Kyiv says are Russian missile attacks aimed at civilians. In his nightly video address on Friday, Zelenskiy denounced the strikes on an apartment building and a recreation centre in a small coastal town near Odesa in southern Ukraine that left at least 21 people dead.
Russian forces are continuing to achieve “minor advances” in the strategic city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, with air and artillery strikes continuing in the district, British intelligence says. Ukrainian forces probably continue to block Russian forces in the south-eastern outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian city, according to the latest UK Ministry of Defence report.
The Ukrainian army has rejected claims that Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces have surrounded the key eastern city of Lysychansk. Ruslan Muzytchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian National Guard, said fighting rages around Lysychansk but that the city remains under the control of Ukraine. Russian-back separatists earlier claimed they had “completely” encircled Lysychansk.
Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces destroyed five Ukrainian army command posts in Donbas and in the Mykolaiv region, according to Russian state media. Three weapons storage sites were also destroyed in the Zaporizhzhia region in south-east Ukraine, the ministry was quoted as saying. These claims have not been independently verified.
Rescue workers have recovered as many as 29 body fragments amid the rubble of deadly Russian missile strikes on a shopping centre in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, Ukraine’s state emergency service said. At least 19 people were killed on Monday after two Russian X-22 cruise missiles hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk, officials said.
The UK government has condemned the exploitation of prisoners of war after two more British men held by Russian proxies in east Ukraine and charged with “mercenary activities” could face the death penalty. Andrew Hill of Plymouth and Dylan Healy of Huntingdon were reported to have been charged with “forcible seizure of power” and undergoing “terrorist” training, according to a state news agency in Russian-controlled Donetsk.
A Briton and a Moroccan man sentenced to death by pro-Russia officials in Russian-controlled east Ukraine have appealed against their sentences, Russian state media reported. The supreme court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has received appeals from lawyers for Brahim Saadoun and Shaun Pinner, according to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass. Another Briton sentenced to death by the Russian proxy court, Aiden Aslin, had not yet submitted an appeal, Tass reports.
A series of recent assassination attempts targeting pro-Russian officials suggests a growing resistance movement against Russian-backed authorities occupying parts of southern Ukraine, according to US officials. The resistance could grow into a wider counterinsurgency that would pose a significant challenge to Russia’s ability to control captured Ukrainian territories, CNN has cited officials as saying.
Ukraine’s army has accused Russia of carrying out strikes using incendiary phosphorus munitions on Snake Island a day after Moscow’s withdrawal of forces. A statement by the army was accompanied by a video that showed a plane drop munitions at least twice on the island, and what appeared to be white streaks rising above it.
The US announced on Friday that it will provide Ukraine with an additional $820 million in military aid. The new aid package will include new surface-to-air missile systems and counter-artillery radars to respond to Russia’s long-range strikes in its war against Ukraine. The Pentagon also announced that it will provide up to 150,000 rounds of millimetre artillery ammunition.
