The local administration said 15 residents of Kherson were killed and 35 injured as a result of Russian shelling on Friday.
SourceAFP
© BULENT KILIC / AFP
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Lhe Russian army does not relax its bombardments in Ukraine, and in particular on Kherson, in the south of the country, from where the troops of Moscow withdrew recently. “Today, 15 residents of the city were killed and 35 injured, including a child”, following the Russian strikes, said Galyna Lugova, head of the city’s military administration, on social networks. She said several “private homes and high-rise buildings” were damaged in the strikes. It is the deadliest bombardment in recent days.
Moscow’s strategy of targeting critical infrastructure as Ukraine tumbles into winter temperatures is a ‘war crime’ for Ukraine’s Western allies and branded a ‘crime against humanity’ by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The Russian invaders opened fire on a residential area using multiple rocket launchers. A large building caught fire,” Yaroslav Yanushevich, governor of the Kherson region, said earlier today. “Due to the constant Russian shelling, we are evacuating patients from hospitals in Kherson.”
The Russian withdrawal from Kherson, which Moscow hoped to make its base in occupied southern Ukraine, has reshuffled the cards in this nine-month-long war. The city is strategically located to connect the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia since 2014, and the Ukrainian port of Odessa to the west. Meanwhile, more than six million homes in Ukraine were affected by power cuts in Ukraine on Friday, two days after massive Russian strikes against that country, according to Volodymyr Zelensky. “Tonight, cuts continue in most regions and in kyiv,” added the head of state in his daily address.
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Electricity still cut in part of kyiv
kyiv – with some 600,000 homes without electricity in the evening – and its region, as well as the provinces of Odessa (south), Lviv, Vinnytsia (west) and Dnipropetrovsk (center-east), are the most affected by the cuts, he added, calling on Ukrainians to save electricity in areas where power has been restored. “We have to endure this winter – a winter everyone will remember,” he posted on Facebook. He had visited earlier in the day Vyshgorod, a city north of kyiv where the strikes left six dead and dozens injured on Wednesday.
In the capital, “a third of kyiv’s homes already have heating, specialists continue to restore it. Half of the users are still without electricity,” said its mayor, Vitali Klitschko. “During the day, the energy companies plan to connect electricity for all users alternately,” he said, at a time when temperatures were around zero degrees and rain was part of the game. .
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The support of the international community
Faced with these massive Russian bombardments, Ukraine received anti-aircraft defense systems from the West, but it would need more to neutralize Moscow’s missiles and drones. Paris and Berlin “will support Ukraine until the end of this conflict”, assured French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in Berlin, alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “Since day one of this brutal war, our two countries have provided unwavering support to Ukraine,” said Prime Minister
The German Chancellor judged for his part that “Russia’s policy of terror by bombs against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine must end”. He recalled that Germany and France were working to help Ukraine “rebuild its energy infrastructure”, which was partly destroyed. Visiting Ukraine on Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also announced new aid to Ukrainians, in particular the dispatch of ambulances and “support” for “survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by the Russian army”.