Ukraine
According to the Russian-appointed mayor and governor, another 20 people were injured in an attack on an occupied city in eastern Ukraine
Sun Jan 21, 2024 3:20pm GMT
At least 25 people have been killed after Ukrainian forces bombed a busy shopping area in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, local officials said.
Alexei Kulemzin, the city's Russian-appointed mayor, said Ukrainian artillery fired on a busy neighborhood containing shops and a market. Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the Donetsk region, said emergency services were at the scene, adding that another 20 people, including two children, were injured in the strike in the suburb of Tekstilshchik.
Pushilin said the area was hit by 155 mm and 152 mm caliber shells fired from the Kurakhove and Krasnohorivka directions to the west. Local authorities have declared Monday a day of mourning.
Portal photos and videos taken at the scene showed crying people, some of whom said they had lost relatives, and bodies lying in the snow near one of the city's markets.
Videos shared by Russian state media showed broken storefronts and shattered glass, with what appeared to be bodies lying on the ground nearby.
A local resident named Tatiana said she heard a projectile above her and hid under her market stall. “I saw smoke, people were screaming, a woman was crying,” she told a local media outlet.
“Where is there anything military here? It’s just a market,” said another resident of the same outlet. “This is one of the strongest blows in recent memory.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying: “Security threats and terrorist attacks should not be carried out from the territory of Ukraine.” It added in a statement: “These terrorist attacks by the Kiev regime clearly demonstrate the lack of political will to achieve peace achieve and resolve this conflict through diplomatic means.”
Ukraine has not commented on the incident and the claims could not be independently verified.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia allegedly annexed in 2022, which was condemned as illegal by most countries at the UN General Assembly. Moscow does not fully control any of the four regions.
Elsewhere, a fire broke out at a chemical transport terminal in the Russian port of Ust-Luga following two explosions on Sunday, regional officials said. Local media reported that Ukrainian drones attacked the port and caused a gas tank to explode.
Yuri Zapalatsky, the head of Russia's Kingisepp district where the port is located, said there were no injuries but that the area had been placed on high alert.
Fire breaks out at the Russian gas terminal in the Baltic Sea port – video
The fire occurred at a site owned by Russia's second-largest natural gas producer Novatek, 100 miles southwest of St. Petersburg. In a press release to Russian media outlet RBC, the company said the fire was the result of “external influence.” It was also said that operations in the port had stopped.
The Fontanka news agency reported that two drones were spotted flying towards St. Petersburg on Sunday morning, but they were diverted towards Kingisepp.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported no drone activity in the Kingisepp area in its daily briefing. It said four Ukrainian drones were shot down in the Smolensk region, and two more were shot down in the Oryol and Tula regions.
Russian officials had previously confirmed that a Ukrainian drone was shot down on the outskirts of St. Petersburg on Thursday.
News of the attacks came as the Ukrainian military downplayed the Russian capture of the small village of Krokhmalne in the Kharkiv region as a “temporary phenomenon.”
“We simply don't report on the defense from 100 to 200 meters away, and for Russian propagandists every victory has to be presented to explain why they lost 7,055 soldiers at the front in the Khortytsia area of responsibility in January alone,” Ukrainian Der justified Armed Forces Command spokesman Volodymyr Fityo told Ukrainian digital channel Hromadske on Sunday.
Fityo said fronts were shifting daily and Ukrainian troops had been moved to prepared reserve positions to maintain defenses and prevent Russia from further advances.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces claimed on Sunday that Russia had lost 376,030 soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the war. The figure, which has not been independently verified, includes 760 victims in the past day.
The figures, which cover the period from the start of Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 to January 21, 2024, also include details such as the number of weapons, vehicles and defense systems that Russia estimates Ukraine has lost.
According to the statement, these include 6,181 tanks, 11,466 armored fighting vehicles, 11,862 vehicles and fuel tanks, 8,875 artillery systems and 968 multiple rocket systems.
Portal, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
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