At least 13 people were killed and more than 60 injured in a triple Russian attack in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky again criticized the lack of help from his allies: “This would not have happened if Ukraine had received sufficient air defense equipment.”
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Chernihiv, a large city in northern Ukraine, suffered a deadly triple attack on Wednesday, April 17. “At this moment, 61 people, including two children, have been injured. 13 people have died”declared the head of the city's military administration, Dmytro Bryjynsky.
This figure is likely to increasesince “it is likely that there are still people trapped under the rubble of the partially destroyed building,” commented the State Emergency Service.
Three people have been pulled from the rubble and the rescue operation continues, according to the same source.
President Zelensky noted that Ukraine did not have sufficient air defenses to prevent this attack, probably the deadliest ever perpetrated against this historic city located about 60 km from the border with Belarus, an ally of Russia, and about 100 km north of kyiv. .
“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world had been determined enough to resist Russian terror,” the Ukrainian leader hammered on Telegram.
Russia bombs Ukrainian cities daily with missiles and explosive drones, especially their energy infrastructure.
With Western aid drying up, especially from the United States, Ukraine experiences a growing lack of resources to intercept these devices and desperately urges its partners to supply it with more weapons and air defense systems.
The reluctance of its allies especially frustrates Kiev after a massive Iranian airstrike on Israel was successfully repelled over the weekend, thanks largely to Western military support, while a crucial US aid package for Ukraine takes months stalled in Congress.
Read alsoZelensky asks his allies for the same “unity” as with Israel
“Zero rockets”
President Zelensky cited the example of a large thermal power plant near kyiv, which was completely destroyed by Russian missiles on April 11 because, he said, there was no ammunition for the air defense system that was supposed to cover it.
“There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed seven of them. The remaining four destroyed the Trypillia plant. Why did we do it? Because we didn't have rockets. We ran out of rockets to protect Trypillia,” he said in an interview published Tuesday.
In Chernihiv, “three explosions occurred” at 9:03 local time, the mayor had said earlier in the day on television. It was a “direct impact against a civil infrastructure building.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Health indicated that a health center had been damaged. Six people were hospitalized, he added on Telegram.
The governor of the Chernihiv region stated that the attack had “practically” hit the center of the city.
Chernihiv, one of the oldest cities in Ukraine, founded more than 1,000 years ago, had a population of almost 300,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion of February 2022. It was heavily bombed by the Russian Army at the beginning of this offensive and part of the region was occupied for several weeks.
Attack on a Russian base in Crimea
Elsewhere on the Russian side, military bloggers and Russian media reported a Ukrainian attack Tuesday night on the Russian military base in Dzhankoi, on the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Unverified videos of the attack, posted on social media, show impressive explosions in the middle of the night.
According to the Telegram account Rybar, close to the Russian Army and followed by hundreds of thousands of people, 12 ATACMS tactical missiles delivered to kyiv by the United States could have hit the target, damaging equipment and a building. “In all likelihood,” they were fired from the Kherson region of Ukraine.
kyiv and Moscow have not yet officially commented on the matter.
Finally, providing a new minimum estimate of Russian losses, the independent Russian website 'Mediazona' and the Russian 'BBC' service said they had identified by name, from public information, more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
The Russians do not reveal their casualties. For his part, the Ukrainian president admitted in February that 31,000 soldiers had died.
With AFP
This article was adapted from its original in French
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