Russia continues strike on Kyiv suburbs

Lviv: Russian forces fired artillery strikes on suburbs northwest of Kyiv overnight and targeted points east of the capital, the head of the Kyiv region said Monday. A town councilor for Brovary east of Kyiv was killed in fighting there, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television. He also reported strikes overnight on the northwest towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital.

The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Monday morning that Russian troops have not made major advances over the past 24 hours despite expanding strikes to the west. Ukrainian forces are targeting Russian bases, targeting their logistical abilities, the general staff said in a statement on Facebook marking the 19th day of the war. 

The general staff accused Russian forces of setting up firing positions and military equipment in churches and other civilian infrastructure so that Ukrainian forces can't fire back. The accusation could not be immediately verified, though Associated Press reporters have seen

Russian armoured vehicles in residential areas.

An artillery strike hit a nine-story apartment building in the Obolonsky district of northern Kyiv on Monday morning, destroying apartments on several floors and igniting a fire. The state emergency agency, which released images of the smoking



building, said no casualties have been reported so far.

The attacks around the capital, Kyiv, came a day after Russia escalated its offensive by shelling areas close to the Polish border, including an airbase critical to Ukraine's defense.  The Ukrainian military said Monday that Russian troops had not made great strides over the past day. Russia's Defense Ministry says its forces have advanced.

The fighting, now in its third week, continued to exact a human toll. A pregnant woman and her baby died after Russia bombed the maternity hospital where she was meant to give birth. Associated Press images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher were circulated around the world and encapsulated the horror of attacks on humanity's most innocent.

The Ukrainian president's office reported Monday that airstrikes hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and knocked out a television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest. Explosions rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday its forces had advanced 11 kilometers (7 miles) over the past 24 hours. A ministry spokesman did not comment in a video statement on humanitarian corridors or the crisis in the desperate, strategically important city of Mariupol.