Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images Loud explosions rocked the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv early Saturday, the mayor said, a day after authorities said at least 21 people were killed when Russian missiles hit an apartment building near the Black Sea port of Odessa. Air raid sirens sounded in the area of Mykolayiv, which borders the vital port of Odessa, before the explosions. “There are powerful explosions in the city! Stay in shelters!” Mykolayiv mayor Oleksandr Senkevich wrote on the Telegram messaging app. It was not immediately known what caused the explosions. Reuters could not independently verify the report. Explosions leveled part of an apartment building while residents slept on Friday, another in a series of what Ukraine says are Russian missile attacks targeting civilians. In his nightly video address on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the strikes as “conscious, deliberately targeted Russian terrorism and not some kind of mistake or accidental missile strike.” Kyiv says Moscow has stepped up long-range missile attacks, hitting civilian targets far from the front lines. Russia says it is targeting military sites. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cited President Vladimir Putin’s statements “that the Russian Armed Forces do not cooperate with political goals.” A Russian missile earlier this week struck a busy shopping center in central Ukraine, killing at least 19 people. Thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what Moscow calls a “special operation” to root out nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say this is an unprovoked war of aggression.
Sifting through rubble
Residents in the resort town of Serhiivka near Odessa helped workers clear the rubble of the nine-story apartment building, part of which was destroyed in the strike early Friday. “We came here to the scene, assessed the situation together with emergency workers and locals, and together we helped those who survived. And those who unfortunately died. We helped to carry them away,” said Oleksandr Abramov, who lives nearby and rushed to the scene when he heard the explosion. Serhi Brachuk, a spokesman for the Odesa regional administration, said 21 people had been confirmed killed, including a 12-year-old boy. The region will observe a day of mourning on Saturday for those killed during the attack, Braczuk said. The Serhiivka strike came shortly after Russia withdrew its troops from Snake Island, a strategically important outcrop about 140 km (85 miles) southeast of Odessa that it seized on the first day of the war. A war crimes prosecutor (C) and a rescuer (R) and a politician look at a damaged building after a rocket attack in the Ukrainian town of Serhiivka, near Odessa, killed at least 18 people and injured 30, on July 1, 2022. Oleksandr Gimanov | AFP | Getty Images Ukraine’s chief of the General Staff, Valeriy Zaluzhny, accused Russia of not living up to its claims that it had abandoned Snake Island as a “gesture of goodwill”. On the Telegram messaging app channel, Zaluzny said two Russian warplanes took off from a base in Crimea and bombed targets on the island on Friday night. He posted video of the attack as he said. Reuters could not confirm the authenticity of the video or the Russian action depicted. There was no immediate Russian comment. Russian forces had used Snake Island to control the northwestern Black Sea and impose a blockade on Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters. Moscow denies responsibility for a food crisis it says is caused by Western sanctions that are hurting its own exports. Putin met Indonesia’s president on Thursday and spoke by phone on Friday with India’s prime minister, promising both major food importers that Russia would remain a major grain supplier.
No natural gas, electricity, water
Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, inspected units of Russian troops participating in Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday. It was unclear whether Gerasimov had traveled to Ukrainian soil. Russia’s stepped-up campaign of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities coincides with its forces making gains on the battlefield in the east, aiming to force Ukraine to cede Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Moscow has been on the brink of seizing Luhansk since capturing the city of Severodonetsk last week after some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The eastern city of Sievierodonetsk has come under intense artillery and rocket fire from the Russian military. Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images Ukraine’s last stronghold in Luhansk is Lysychansk, which was nearly surrounded under Russian artillery barrages. “Private houses in attacked villages are burning one by one,” Luhansk Governor Serhii Gaidai said on Telegram. With such a high density of shelling, we only have time to protect the wounded. Fires at the same time in many places. We barely have time to put out the large-scale fires in Lysychansk.” Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said four civilians were killed in the region by Russian shelling on Friday and 12 were wounded. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported widespread Russian shelling on Friday, including in Kharkiv in the north, and an artillery attack on Ukrainian troop positions in the border regions of Sumy and Chernihiv. More weapons are needed in eastern and southern Ukraine, Zelensky said, as the Pentagon announced the United States is sending two NASAMS surface-to-air missile systems, four additional anti-aircraft radars and ammunition as part of its latest weapons package.
