The regional authorities of Lugansk consider dead most of the 90 people who took refuge in the school
Everything indicated that the Russian attacks on Ukraine were going to intensify on the occasion of the celebration of Victory Day, which is celebrated this Monday, and so it has been. The Kremlin troops have bombed a school in Belogorovka, in the Ukrainian province of Lugansk, where around a hundred civilians were taking refuge at dawn this Sunday. The emergency services have removed two bodies from the rubble but there are at least 60 missing whom the local authorities consider dead.
“Most likely, all 60 people under the rubble of the building have died. Russia cannot kill soldiers, but kills innocents,” the region’s civil-military governor, Serhii Haidai, lamented. “These are the real atrocities of the ‘Russian world’: bombing of a school with a bomb shelter, the murder of children,” he added. The same sources confirm that 90 people who took refuge in the building.
The impact of the projectiles has left the building completely destroyed. “Emergency services were unable to work at night due to the attacks. They would have had to illuminate the place, which would have attracted more shelling,” the official said. It is not the only incident with civilian targets in the area. In the neighboring town of Shepilivka, Russian artillery hit a house containing 11 people. All are still missing, although the local authorities hope they have been saved, hidden in the basement.
These are just two examples of the virulence of Russia’s actions in recent hours, concentrated in eastern Ukraine. “The enemy does not cease its offensive operations in the eastern operational zone to establish full control in the territory of the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson regions, and to maintain the land corridor between these territories and occupied Crimea” since 2014, the State indicated. Ukrainian major.
For days, the Ukrainian authorities have warned against the possible intensification of Russian attacks on the eve of the commemoration of May 9, the date on which Moscow celebrates the victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Taking advantage of the date, both Volodimir Zelensky and Valdimir Putin have made public different messages of encouragement to their citizens and to the rest of the world. In the case of the Ukrainian, who this Sunday has to participate in a telematic meeting of the leaders of the G7 powers, he has launched a speech in which he compares the Nazi atrocities in World War II with those that Russia has commented on in his country since last February 24. “Decades later, darkness returned to Ukraine. Evil returned, in a different uniform, with different slogans, but with the same objective », he warned in his message.
Putin also used the date to reaffirm Russian objectives. “Today our soldiers, like their ancestors, fight shoulder to shoulder for the liberation of their homeland from Nazi filth, confident that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” he said.
With political rhetoric raging on both sides, the situation on the ground remains difficult. In Mariupol, the attacks on the Azovstal steelworks continue. Despite everything, the Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in the tunnels of the industrial complex have said, through messages on social networks, that they are resisting. Although between Friday and Saturday, Russian forces managed to make a limited advance around Severodonetsk, one of the main towns in Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, Moscow can only claim complete control of one important city today: Kherson
Counteroffensive
Things are not going well for the invading Army in Kharkov either. There, as reported by the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Ukrainian counteroffensive to prevent the city from being at the mercy of enemy artillery is gaining ground, with the taking of several Russian positions. The thrust of the kyiv soldiers is such that the Russians have been forced to blow up three bridges “to stop the counteroffensive” in this region, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
The battle in the Black Sea continues to leave bad news for the Putin side. There, after the losses of the Moskva and the frigate Admiral Makarov, the Ukrainian Navy would also have destroyed, a hundred kilometers from the coast of Odessa, the Russian landing ship “Serna”, thanks to a combat drone. Russia has not confirmed this information but it has assured that in the last few hours the Ukrainian assault ship has been sunk.
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