Russian forces pounded the town of Lysychansk and its outskirts in an all-out effort to capture the last stronghold of resistance in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province, the governor said on Saturday. Ukrainian fighters have spent weeks trying to defend the city and prevent it from falling to Russia, as neighboring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had taken control of an oil refinery on the edge of Lysychansk in recent days, but Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai reported on Friday that fighting over the facility continued. “In the last day, the occupiers opened fire with all kinds of weapons available,” Haidai said Saturday on the Telegram messaging app. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk are the two provinces that make up the Donbas region, where Russia has focused its offensive since pulling out of northern Ukraine and the capital, Kyiv, in the spring. Pro-Russian separatists have held parts of both eastern provinces since 2014, and Moscow recognizes all of Luhansk and Donetsk as sovereign republics. Syria’s government said Wednesday it would also recognize the “independence and sovereignty” of the two regions and work to establish diplomatic relations with the separatists. In Sloviansk, a major Donetsk city still under Ukrainian control, four people were killed when Russian forces fired cluster munitions late Friday, mayor Vadym Lyakh said on Facebook. He said the neighborhoods hit did not contain potential military targets. The leader of neighboring Belarus, a Russian ally, claimed on Saturday that Ukraine fired missiles at military targets on Belarusian soil several days ago, but all were intercepted by the air defense system. President Alexander Lukashenko called it a challenge and noted that no Belarusian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian military. Belarus hosts Russian military units and was used as a staging post for the Russian invasion. Last week, just hours before Lukashenko was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian long-range bombers fired missiles at Ukraine from Belarusian airspace for the first time. Lukashenko has so far resisted attempts to drag his army into war. But during their meeting, Putin announced that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system and reminded Lukashenko how dependent his government is on financial support from Russia. Lukashenko also claimed on Saturday that two Belarusian truck drivers were killed in Ukraine. Ukraine said the truckers were at a gas station when it was hit by a Russian airstrike in March, but Lukashenko claimed organs were cut from their bodies to hide evidence they had been shot. Elsewhere in Ukraine, searchers combed through debris from a Russian airstrike early Friday in residential areas near the Ukrainian port of Odessa that killed 21 people. Ukraine’s attorney general Iryna Venediktova said investigators were recovering fragments from rockets that hit an apartment building in the small coastal town of Serhiivka. They also took measurements to determine the trajectory of the weapons and “the specific people who are guilty of this terrible war crime,” he said. Larissa Andruchenko said she was in the kitchen making tea at about 1am when an explosion blew open the doors. At first she thought the propane gas tank had exploded and called her husband into the kitchen. “And right after that the lights went out and it was a nightmare. The two of us are in the kitchen with glass flying, everything was flying,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said three anti-ship missiles hit “an ordinary residential building, a nine-story building” housing about 160 people. The victims of Friday’s attack also included four members of a family staying at a seaside campsite, he said. “I stress: This is deliberate direct Russian terrorism, and not some mistake or accidental missile strike,” Zelensky said. The British Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that air-launched anti-ship missiles are generally not accurate against ground targets. He said Russia was likely using such missiles because of a lack of more expensive weapons. The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that the Russian military is targeting fuel storage sites and military installations, not residential areas, although missiles recently hit an apartment building in Kyiv and a shopping center in the central city of Kremenchuk. On Saturday, Kremenchuk Mayor Vitaliy Maletskyy said the death toll in the mall attack had risen to 21 and one person was still missing. Ukrainian authorities interpreted the missile attack in Odessa as retaliation for the withdrawal of Russian troops from a nearby Black Sea island of symbolic and strategic importance in the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow presented their departure from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” to help unblock grain exports. ——
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