Russia hit hundreds of military targets in Ukraine

Russia yesterday said that it had hit hundreds of military targets in Ukraine overnight, destroying command posts with air-launched missiles while authorities in the western city of Lviv which has escaped heavy bombardment, said a missile attack killed six.

The Russian Defence Ministry said, in a statement, it had destroyed 16 Ukrainian military facilities in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk regions and in the port of Mykolayiv, in the south and east of the country.

It added that the Russian Air Force had launched strikes against 108 areas where Ukrainian forces were concentrated and Russian artillery struck 315 Ukrainian military targets overnight. Driven back by Ukrainian resistance in the north, the Russian military has refocused its ground offensive in the two eastern provinces known as the Donbas while launching long-distance strikes at other targets including the capital,



Kyiv. 

Russia is now trying to take full control of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which has been besieged for weeks and which would be a huge strategic prize, linking territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region Moscow annexed in 2014.

Ukrainian authorities said, missiles struck military facilities and a car tire service point in Lviv, which is just 60 kilometers from the Polish border. Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadoviy said, seven people were killed and 11 were wounded. The blast shattered windows of a hotel housing Ukrainians evacuated from elsewhere in the country, he added. 

Russia denies targeting civilians and rejects what Ukraine terms as evidence of atrocities, saying Ukraine has staged them to undermine peace talks. Western capitals and Kyiv accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of unprovoked aggression.