Russian missiles have struck cities and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, hitting homes, a school and a community centre as Russia President Vladimir Putin was in Iran to discuss a United Nations-backed proposal to unblock exports of Ukrainian grain.
At least two civilians were killed and 15 more were wounded by Russian attacks across Ukraine during the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said in a morning update on Monday.
In Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is considered a likely occupation target of Russian forces, one person was killed in an air raid on Monday that hit a five-story residential building, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in televised comments.
Ukraine’s Emergency Service said on Telegram that 10 people were wounded, five of them hospitalised, but it did not mention any deaths.
Fresh blood stained the concrete nearby as apartments on at least two floors burned. In the aftermath of the attack, shrapnel was placed in a small pile near an empty playground.
“There was no one here. Everything is ruined,” Halyna Maydannyk, the resident of one burned apartment, told The Associated Press. “Who knows why they’re doing this? We were all living peacefully.”
Kramatorsk residents Mykola Zavodovskyi and Tetiana Zavodovska stood in bandages outside a local hospital. They said they heard a loud clap and went to their balcony to investigate. Then everything exploded and the windows shattered.
“Probably, it was a rocket, and probably it was brought down by Ukrainian forces,” they told AP.
The attack came shortly after noon after Kyrylenko had earlier reported four other Russian raids in Kramatorsk and urged civilians to evacuate.
“The infrastructure of the cities is being methodically destroyed by missile strikes, and the civilian population, cut off from bare necessities, suffers the most,” Kyrylenko.
Ukrainian forces on the ground in the east are fighting to hold onto the declining territory under their control.
Ukraine and its President have continued to accuse Russia and its Military of War Crimes especially as it has stepped up attacks on Infratsructure in recent weeks in the slow grinding assault on Ukrain in what is described as a special Military Operation.
