Kiev, June 14, (dpa/GNA) – At least six people were killed and many were injured in renewed Russian air strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine, Kiev said on Wednesday, as heavy fighting continued in the south and east, as Ukrainian fighters try to regain land seized by Russia.
At least three people were killed and 13 injured in Russian missile attacks on Odessa, Ukrainian authorities said earlier.
A Kalibr missile hit a warehouse building and started a fire, the Ukrainian army’s southern operational command wrote on Facebook. Three people were killed and seven injured, and rescuers were clearing the debris and searching for people trapped under the rubble.
A total of four Kalibr cruise missiles were fired at the city, the military said.
Six other people were injured in an attack that targeted civilian infrastructure including a business centre, a training centre, a residential complex, restaurants and shops, the military said.
Meanwhile further east, in Donetsk, three people were killed and six others injured by Russian missiles in Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka and the surrounding area, the head of the local military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said in a post on Facebook. Several houses were destroyed and dozens damaged, he said.
Officials also said six people had died after Russian artillery fire the previous day in the north-eastern border region of Sumy, including four employees of a forestry office.
Sumy suffered an intense wave of attacks, with the local authorities recording more than 100 explosions there during the day.
In the the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, one person died of severe burn injuries one day after the attack on a residential building, the authorities said, bringing the death toll there to 12.
As Ukraine seeks to reclaim territory in its counteroffensive, Russia is launching daily attacks on Ukraine, bombarding neighbourhoods with drones, missiles and cruise missiles.
On the Russian side, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, says his cousin and close confidant Adam Delimkhanov is missing from the front in Ukraine.
“I simply cannot find Adam Delimkhanov. He isn’t reporting,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
Delimkhanov is also a member of the Russian parliament.
However, parliamentary head Vyacheslav Volodin said he had apparently heard from Delimkhanov.
Chechen commander Apti Alaudinov nevertheless wrote that Kadyrov had instructed him to find Delimkhanov “by any means,” even the withdrawal of all of the Chechen army Akhmat’s units around the village of Maryinka in Donetsk.
As the war continues, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a meeting in Brussels, that he saw progress on the Ukrainian side.
“It is still early days. And we do not know if this will be a turning point in the war. But we see that the Ukrainians are making advances and liberating more land,” he said.
“We know that the more gains Ukraine makes, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table. The more gains Ukraine makes, the more likely it will be that President [Vladimir] Putin realizes he cannot win on the battlefield, but has to negotiate a just peace.”
Stoltenberg paid tribute to the “courage and commitment of the Ukrainian forces.
“It also demonstrates that the support provided by NATO allies is making a real difference on the battlefield as we speak,” he added.
Meanwhile in southern Ukraine, rescue efforts continue, following the breach of the Kharkovka dam and a Red Cross official expressed concerns about the effects far beyond the region immediately affected.
Hundreds of kilometres to the north-east, water shortages are likely to affect hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the drop in the level of the reservoir, the head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jürg Eglin, said in the Kherson region.
Upstream, “there will be massive needs in days and months to come,” Eglin said, pointing to drinking water and agricultural regions alike. He said it was unclear how fields would be irrigated in the future, and what the dam burst will mean for industries reliant on water.
The ICRC brought pumps and materials for drinking water treatment to the flooded areas and aims to reach the left bank of the Dnipro River, which is occupied by Russian forces. Tens of thousands of people are likewise also affected in that area too.
In Moscow, Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister of Russia, suggested destroying the cable connection between Europe and the United States as a possible retaliation for the Nord Stream pipeline blasts.
“Assuming the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, we have no more obstacles at all – including moral ones – to refrain from destroying the cable connection of our enemies laid at the bottom of the ocean,” the deputy head of the Russian National Security Council wrote on his Telegram channel.
The politician has repeatedly spoken out in favour of destroying the Ukrainian state, in what is seen as a bid to score points with Russian ultra-nationalists and warmongers with extremist populist statements.
Medvedev was responding to media reports claiming that a trail for the attacks led to Ukraine and that Western intelligence services had been informed in advance of attack plans. Ukraine rejects any involvement. The alleged involvement of the secret services has also not been confirmed.
Russia has long called for a transparent investigation into the September 2022 blasts that tore holes in the pipelines of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines laid from Russia to Germany. Moscow has rejected accusations from the West that it had blown up its own pipelines.
Medvedev also backed Putin’s mention of the possible creation of a demilitarized zone in Ukraine, against which Russia has been waging a brutal war for more than 15 months.
Putin referred to a “sanitary zone” on Tuesday without explaining what he meant. The western line of the zone should be so far away from Russia that attacks are no longer possible from there, to prevent shelling of Russian territory.
Medvedev said that due to Western deliveries of longer-range weapons to Ukraine, the line should be on the Polish border.
“Then these will be the new secure borders,” he said.
GNA