MOSCOW: Russia said Ukrainian artillery hit a Russian town for a third time this week and drones struck two oil refineries in an uptick in attacks on Russian territory as Ukraine prepares a Western-backed push to end Moscow’s invasion.
Inside Ukraine, Russian-installed officials said five people had been killed in Ukrainian army shelling of a Russian-occupied village in the east, where Russia has fought months of bloody and inconclusive battles to try to seize more territory.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the Russian reports, in a week when the two countries accused each other of spreading terror in their capitals with air strikes.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in Ukraine and towns and cities laid to waste since Moscow’s forces invaded 15 months ago, but Tuesday (May 30) marked only the second time Moscow had come under direct fire – from a flurry of drones – although oil and military facilities elsewhere in Russia have been hit.
In the Russian town of Shebekino on the Ukrainian border, two of four wounded people were hospitalised and shells damaged an apartment building, four homes and a school as well as power lines, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Later, Gladkov told Russian television there had been more Ukrainian shelling of Shebekino and a fire had broken out at an industrial site.
Both sides say they are targeting the buildup of each other’s forces and military equipment ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, which it says will come in days or weeks, to try to drive Russian forces out of eastern and southern regions.
Away from the front lines of the conflict, the United Nations was trying to salvage a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports.
To that end, the UN has made a “mutually beneficial” proposal that Ukraine, Russia and Turkey begin preparatory work for the transit of Russian ammonia through Ukraine, a source close to the talks said on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, accused Russia of blocking all activity at the port of Pivdennyi, with 1.5 million tonnes of agricultural products unable to move.
“… the blockade of one port in Ukraine poses extremely serious risks for different nations, particularly those with relations that Russia tries to use for speculative purposes.”
The UN and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative between Moscow and Kyiv last July to help tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a leading grain exporter.
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