Kiev, Ukraine (AP) – The UN chief says Ukraine has become “the epicenter of unbearable distress and pain” – a description quickly underscored by Russia’s first attack on the capital since Moscow’s forces retired. a few weeks ago.
Russia hit targets across Ukraine on Thursday, including an attack in Kiev that attacked a skyscraper and injured 10 people, including at least one who lost a leg, according to emergency services of Ukrainian.
The bombing came just an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a press conference with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which examined the devastation in and around Kiev and condemned the attacks on civilians.
Meanwhile, explosions have been reported across the country, western Poland, in Chernihiv, near the Belarusian border, and in Pastiv, a major railway center southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odessa in southern Ukraine said the missiles were resolved by air defense.
Ukrainian authorities have also reported heavy fires in Russia in the Donbas – the eastern industrial center that the Kremlin says its main target – and near the city of Kharkov, northeast of the Donbas, is considered key to attack.
Ukrainian fighters reacted in the ruined southern port city of Mariupol steel mill. It was the last pocket of resistance, said a concentrated bombing that killed and injured more people. And authorities warn that the city’s lack of clean water could lead to the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
In Zaporizhia, an important station for thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol. Among those injured was an 11-year-old boy in the missile attack, which authorities say first hit a residential area of the southern city since the war began. The debris from the glass cut the child to the bone.
Vadim Vodostoev, the child’s father, said: “It only takes a second and you have nothing left.”
In the town of Liman near Slovyansk, where Russian forces are trying to advance as part of an operation in the Donbas, another tragedy occurred on Monday when a bombing rained down on the home of Tatiana Maksagor.
“There was such an explosion and then there was smoke; “You don’t understand anything,” he said, crying outside the hospital with a wound in his neck. “You can’t see anything in front of you and then I see my nephew lying down.”
Maxagori’s 14-year-old nephew Igor was pronounced dead after he was rushed by an ambulance to the hospital. Her daughter was in critical condition and her son -in -law was also killed.
“Grandma, can I live?” – He said, Igor was asked when they were in the basement waiting for help. “I said he would live. But look what happened, I cheated on him. I am alive and he is not. I wish I had just died and he lived. I lived longer than that. I can never forgive myself for this. “
The Ukrainian army said on Thursday that Russian troops had bombed several areas in the Donbas with “intense fire” and that Ukrainian forces had repelled six attacks in the region in the past 24 hours.
The regional governor said four civilians were also killed as a result of intense attacks on residential areas in the Luhansk region of Donbas.
Piles of smoke were observed and artillery and sirens were heard in different parts of the Donetsk Donetsk region.
The new attacks came after Guterres investigated the demolition of small towns near the capital, which saw some of the most heinous atrocities. The first attack of the war. He condemned atrocities committed in Cities like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia abruptly withdrew in early April amid intense protests.
“Where there is war, the highest price is paid to civilians,” the United Nations leader said.
During the attack in Kiev, explosions shook the city and fire broke out in the windows of a residential skyscraper and another building. The capital has remained relatively intact over the past few weeks since Moscow turned its efforts to the Donbas.
The bomber struck shortly after noon in the Shevchenkovsky district, northwest of Kiev, as residents returned to the city more frequently. Cafes and other businesses reopened and more and more people came out and enjoyed the spring season.
It is not yet known how far the attack will be from Guterres.
It is difficult to get a complete picture of the fighting taking place in the east, as airstrikes and artillery have become extremely dangerous for journalists to move. During the war, which was now in its third month, many publishers were killed.
Additionally, Ukraine -backed and Moscow -supported rebels fighting in the east have imposed severe restrictions on combat zone reports.
Western officials say the Kremlin’s apparent goal is to seize Donbass by besieging and destroying Ukrainian forces from the north, south and east.
But so far, Russian troops and their allied separatist forces appear to have made only small successes – a senior U.S. defense official described them as walking several kilometers per day – by taking a few small towns as they try to advance in relatively small groups against the powerful. opposition from Ukraine. . .
On Thursday, Russia fired about 1,900 missiles at Ukraine, most of them firing from Ukraine’s borders, a U.S. official said. Most of the shots were in Mariupol and Donbass.
The British Defense Ministry said on Friday that Russia’s limited territory had been achieved in large amounts with their forces.
Russian military units were destroyed in a futile attempt to invade Kiev and had to be regrouped and rebuilt. Some analysts say the delay in launching a massive offensive may reflect Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to wait until his forces are ready for a decisive battle, rather than rush and risk one. another defeat that could shake the country. his government amid deteriorating economic conditions. At home because of Western penalties.
Many observers suspect that Putin wanted to achieve a great victory in the East on Victory Day, May 9, one of the proudest holidays on the Russian calendar, to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Many Russian soldiers already in Mariupol are leaving and moving northwest, a U.S. defense official said. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the U.S. military assessment, did not provide exact figures, but said a “significant number” of a dozen fighting groups in the city were leaving. city.
In Mariupol, a video posted on the Internet by the Azov Regiment of Ukraine on the Internet showed people digging up rubble to evacuate the dead and help the wounded. The regiment said the Russians had hit a temporary underground hospital and its operating room, killing an unknown number of people. The video cannot be independently verified.
About 100,000 people were detained in Mariupol.
“There could be a deadly epidemic in the city due to the lack of centralized supply of water and sewage,” the city council said in the Telegram messaging app. He said the bodies had collapsed under the rubble and there was a “catastrophic” shortage of drinking water and food.
Associated Press reporters John Gambrel and Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Jessica Fish in Slovyansk and AP colleagues from around the world contributed to this report.
Source: Huffpost
