Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, suffered several bombings from Russian troops on Saturday, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country’s forces had achieved “tactical successes” in the region.
Ukraine retains control of Kharkiv, but the city suffers frequent shelling from Moscow forces.
One person died and five were injured due to “enemy artillery and mortar attacks”, the Kharkiv regional military administration reported on Telegram.
“The situation in the Kharkiv region is tough, but our Armed Forces, our intelligence, have recorded important tactical successes,” Zelensky said in a televised speech.
Ukrainian troops announced that they had recovered a “strategically important” village near Kharkiv: Ruska Lozova. They also reported the evacuation of hundreds of civilians.
“It was two months of living under horrible fear. Nothing but a terrible and persistent fear,” Natalia, a 28-year-old girl who managed to escape the village, told AFP.
A 40-year-old man who asked to be identified only by his first name, Svyatoslav, said he spent two months in a basement without food and ate whatever he found.
Russia confirmed on Friday that it carried out air strikes on Kiev during a visit by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the first attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks, an action that left a journalist dead.
Zelensky called for a more vehement global response to Thursday’s attacks, which came after his meeting with Guterres.
“It is regrettable, but such a deliberate and brutal humiliation of the United Nations by Russia has not met with a response,” he said.
Guterres also visited Bucha and other areas in the Kiev suburbs where Russia has been accused of committing war crimes. Moscow denies killing civilians.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it used “long-range, high-precision weapons” which “destroyed buildings where Artyom missiles are produced in Kiev”.
“I believe that Russians fear nothing, not even the judgment of the rest of the world,” Anna Hromovich, deputy director of a clinic that was hit by the attack and badly damaged, told AFP.
– Putin’s “depravity” –
Ukrainian prosecutors said they had identified more than 8,000 war crimes and that they were investigating 10 Russian soldiers for suspected atrocities in Bucha, where dozens of bodies in civilian clothes were found after the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described the destruction in Ukraine on Friday and criticized what he called Putin’s “depravity”.
More than two months after the invasion began, after the failure of the initial objective of conquering Kiev, Russia is now stepping up operations in the eastern region of the Donbass and strengthening its grip in the devastated southern port city of Mariupol.
Kiev authorities said they wanted to evacuate civilians from the besieged Azovstal steel plant, which represents the last stronghold in Mariupol with hundreds of civilians alongside the last Ukrainian soldiers.
But Denis Pushilin, leader of the breakaway Donetsk region, accused Ukrainian forces of “acting as a terrorist” for allegedly holding civilians at the steel mill.
– Irregular advances –
In recent days, Kiev has admitted that Russian forces have captured several small towns in the Donbass.
But Ukrainian forces, armed by Western countries, also reported small front-line victories.
A NATO source said Russia had made “small and uneven” advances in its attempt to encircle enemy positions in the face of counterattack by Ukrainian troops.
The Pentagon said the Russians had “fallen behind what they hoped to achieve in the Donbass” because airstrikes had failed to pave the ground for advances.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country’s offensive was “according to plans”.
In an interview published on Saturday by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Lavrov also called on NATO and the United States to stop sending weapons to Kiev “if they are really interested in solving the Ukrainian crisis”.
Ukraine expects to receive more weapons promised by Western countries. During the week, US President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion to arm and support the Kiev government.
Fears of the conflict spreading across Europe reached the pro-Russian breakaway zone of Transnistria in Moldova after explosions and gunfire were reported in the region.
The war has caused 5.4 million people to flee from Ukraine and another 7.7 million have been displaced within the country since the invasion began, according to the UN.
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