Several Russian attacks today left at least three dead and 28 injured, particularly in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, close to the border with Russia and increasingly bombed by the Russian Army.
This led Kiev to ask Western allies for more modern Patriot air defense systems.
In Kharkiv, which had almost a million and a half inhabitants before the war, a Russian missile killed at least one person and injured 16 people, four of whom were children, when it hit residential buildings, according to local authorities.
“According to preliminary data, the enemy hit Kharkiv today with a large-caliber guided missile for the first time,” wrote the region’s governor, Oleg Synegubov, on the Telegram digital platform.
Four people had already been injured in night bombings and an attack with ‘drones’ (unmanned devices) in the same region, Synegubov had previously announced.
Two more people were killed today in attacks elsewhere in Ukraine.
The governor of the Kherson region, in the south of the country, indicated that a 61-year-old woman died in her home, during a ‘drone’ attack on the village of Mykhailivka, located on one of the banks of the Dniepr, the river that delimits the border line. front in that area.
And another person was killed by artillery fire in Nikopol, a town in the southeast, lamented the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serguii Lyssak.
In addition, eight more civilians were injured in Mykolaiv, a large city in southern Ukraine, in a ballistic missile attack, according to the mayor, Oleksandre Sienkevitch.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, today “vehemently condemned attacks on populated cities, which kill and injure civilians, including young children”, arguing that they “must be protected”.
“I am shocked and dismayed by the horrific news that civilians were killed and injured, including young children, when shelling by the Russian Armed Forces hit homes and a hospital in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv,” said the official, quoted in a statement from the UN Department for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“This comes after a week of daily attacks on cities across Ukraine, which killed people and seriously affected vital services”, said Denise Brown, stressing that “International Humanitarian Law must be respected”.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, with the argument of protecting pro-Russian separatist minorities in the east and “denazifying” the neighboring country, independent since 1991, after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, and which has been move away from Moscow’s space of influence and get closer to Europe and the West.
Already in the third year of war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are faced with a lack of weapons and ammunition, despite promises of help from Western allies, with the last few months having been marked by large-scale Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities and infrastructures, while the Kiev forces have targeted targets on Russian territory close to the border and on the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014.
The war in Ukraine has already caused tens of thousands of deaths on both sides, but has not seen significant progress in the theater of operations in recent months, with the two belligerents remaining irreducible in their territorial positions and without opening for negotiation concessions.
