On Sunday, 123rd day of the war in Ukraine, Russian troops focused their attacks on Lyshchansk, the day after formalizing the capture of its twin city, Severodonetsk, across the Donets River, and also hit[/B] Kiev with missiles, among other places, for the first time in three weeks.[/B]
Russian forcesare using artillery to cut off access to Lyshchansk from the south, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. They also hit civilian and military infrastructure, according to the same source, although this information cannot be independently confirmed.
Lyshchansk is the last town controlled by Ukrainian forces in the Lugansk region. Russian troops are already on its borders.
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Earlier, a nine-story apartment building was hit during a Russian missile attack, killing at least one person and injuring others and trapping several others in the rubble, according to Kiev's mayor Vitaly Klitschko.
While fighting has raged in eastern Ukraine, in Kiev the situation has been comparatively calm in recent months.
Anton Gerasenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, said a missile hit a site where a kindergarten is located in the Sevchenko district.
A seven-year-old girl and her mother were found alive in the wreckage, according to Mayor Klitschko. The building is very close to the Artem weapons factory, which has been repeatedly targeted by Russian attacks.
Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Khoncharenko said a total of 14 missiles hit the capital and its suburbs early yesterday.
Russian forces also struck in the central Cherkassy region, killing one person and wounding five others, according to officials.
Video uploaded to social networking sites shows a railway bridge connecting the two banks of the Dnipro River damaged. Ukrainian railways said they had temporarily suspended services around Cherkassy.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists said they had evacuated 250 civilians from the shelters of the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk after Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city.
Some 200 civilians, including young children, were evacuated from the plant on Saturday, the spokesman for the so-called Lugansk People's Republic in Moscow, Radion Miroshnik, said via Telegram. However, it is not clear where they were taken. There was also talk of a much larger number of civilians sheltering in the factory.
The commander of Ukrainian forces in Lugansk said there were 568 civilians in the factory's shelters before his men left.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had hit three training centers in the north and west with Kalibr cruise missiles, including one in the Starytsy region of the Lviv Oblast, about thirty kilometers away. from the Ukrainian-Polish border.
There is as yet no overall casualty count of the war, which is undoubtedly extremely heavy. According to the UN, it is confirmed that 4,500 civilians had been killed and another 5,500 wounded as of June 15, but these numbers "are probably much higher."
At the military level, Western sources speak of 15,000 to 20,000 Russian military dead, while Ukrainian forces are losing about a hundred men a day, according to Kiev. No independently verified account is available.
Over 7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, according to the UN. Added to these are eight million who fled abroad. Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine counted 37 million people in the territories under Kiev's control. These do not include the inhabitants of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Source: KYPE
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