Ukraine has pushed back Russian troops from the second-largest city of Kharkiv in the fastest advance since Kremlin forces pulled out of kyiv and the northeast more than a month ago.
Reuters journalists have confirmed that Ukraine now controls territory stretching to the banks of the Siverskyi Donets river, some 40 km (25 miles) east of Kharkiv. The city, which has suffered heavy shelling, has been quiet for at least two weeks, but fighting continues to the north.
Firefighters doused the smoldering rubble of the Dergachi House of Culture, 10 km (six miles) north of Kharkiv, after local officials said there was an overnight Russian missile attack on the building used to distribute food. ‘aid. The volunteers inside were trying to collect packages of baby diapers and formula.
“I can’t call it anything other than a terrorist act,” Mayor Vyacheslav Zadorenko told Reuters. “They wanted to hit the base where we store supplies and create a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Another missile had crashed into the building on Thursday and Russian shelling had injured a clinic staff member and killed a young couple in their home, he added.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said its forces shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 plane in the Kharkiv region and disabled the Kremenchuk oil refinery in central Ukraine.
It was not immediately possible to verify these reports.
Southeast of Kharkiv, Britain said Ukraine had blocked Russian forces from crossing the Siverskyi Donets River west of Severodonetsk. Footage released by the Ukrainian Airborne Forces Command appeared to show several charred military vehicles and segments of a bridge partially submerged in the river, as well as numerous other damaged or abandoned vehicles, including tanks, nearby.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report, or when and where the clash took place.
The British Ministry of Defense said that Russia was investing major military efforts near Severodonetsk and Izium, and was trying to break through towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to complete its takeover of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region.
Russian-backed separatists said they had taken over the Zarya Rubizne chemical plant, near Severodonetsk.
The Kremlin describes its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 as a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing a neighbor threatening its security. Ukraine claims that it poses no threat to Russia and that the deaths of thousands of civilians and the destruction of towns and villages show that Russia is waging a war of aggression.
CHILDREN
Ukraine has accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 210,000 children since its February 24 invasion, saying they were among 1.2 million Ukrainians forcibly transferred.
The Kremlin says people came to Russia to escape the fighting.
A kyiv court has begun hearing the first case of what Ukraine calls more than 10,000 possible war crimes; a Russian soldier is accused of murdering a civilian shortly after the invasion. Moscow has accused kyiv of staging such crimes.
In the southern port of Mariupol, Russian forces intensified their bombardment of the steelworks Azovstal, the last stronghold of Ukrainian defenders in a town almost entirely under Russian control after a siege lasting more than two months.
Reuters video showed explosions and heavy smoke on Thursday and Ukrainian fighters released footage showing exchanges of gunfire. Some of the civilians recently evacuated from the tunnels under the factory where they had taken refuge described terrifying conditions.
“Every second was hellish,” Valentyna Demyanchuk, a 51-year-old nurse, told Reuters.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told 1+1 television that negotiations were underway to evacuate the injured.
RUSSIAN SHIP BURNED DOWN
The renewed fighting around Serpents’ Island in recent days could become a battle for control of the western Black Sea coast, some defense officials say, as Russian forces struggle to advance in the north and east. east of Ukraine.
Ukraine said it damaged a Russian Navy logistics vessel near the island, a small but strategic outpost close to Ukraine’s maritime border with Romania.
“Thanks to the actions of our sailors, the support ship Vsevolod Bobrov caught fire – it is one of the newest in the Russian fleet,” said Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the region’s military administration. from Odesa.
Reuters could not independently verify these details. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Satellite imagery from Maxar, a private company based in the United States, showed the aftermath of what it considers probable missile attacks on a Russian Serna-class landing craft near the island, which became famous for the gross mistrust of its Ukrainian defenders at the start of the invasion.
NATO EXPANSION
As fighting continues in the country, wider diplomatic moves have increased pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Foreign ministers from the G7, the group of wealthy nations, met to discuss a planned EU embargo on Russian oil and fears the conflict could spill over into Moldova.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who attended the meeting in Germany, said he hoped recalcitrant EU country Hungary would accept the oil embargo and asked the G7 to hand over Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild.
“We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Russia must pay,” he told reporters.
A day after Russia’s northeast neighbor Finland pledged to join NATO, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said her country’s membership would have a stabilizing effect and benefit to countries around the Baltic Sea.
Joining the 30-nation Western military alliance would end the neutrality the two states maintained during the Cold War and promote NATO expansion that Putin has said he wants to prevent with his invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow called Finland’s announcement hostile and threatened to retaliate, including with unspecified “military-technical” measures, but said a newspaper report that the Kremlin might cut off gas supplies Finland was most likely a “hoax”.
Russian energy supplies to Europe remain Moscow’s biggest source of funds and Europe’s biggest source of heat and electricity.