Authorities in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv said Sunday that widespread Russian bombardments overnight had left at least two civilians dead, as Moscow continued to pummel the sprawling front line.
“Mykolaiv was subjected to mass shelling today. Probably the strongest so far,” the city’s mayor Oleksandr Senkevych wrote on Telegram.
The authorities said leading Ukrainian agricultural magnate Oleksiy Vadatursky, 74, and his wife Raisa were killed when a missile struck their house.
Vadatursky, who was ranked Ukraine’s 24th richest man with a fortune worth US$430 million by Forbes, owned major grain exporter Nibulon and was previously decorated with the prestigious “Hero of Ukraine” award.
Podolyak, the presidential advisor, said his death was “not an accident but a well-planned and organised deliberate murder”.
Mykolaiv – which has been attacked frequently – is the closest Ukrainian city to the southern front where Kyiv’s forces are looking to launch a major counter-offensive to recapture territory lost after Russia’s February invasion.
Strikes also pounded the northeastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, near the front line with the Russian forces.
Sumy regional chief Dmytro Zhyvytsky said that about 50 strikes on Saturday evening had left one person dead and two wounded.
INTENSE BOMBARDMENTS
The governor of the Donetsk region, where Moscow is focusing the brunt of its attacks, said three civilians were killed and eight wounded in shelling Saturday.
AFP journalists on Sunday saw one wounded man collected by an ambulance after a ferocious bombardment of the town of Bakhmut.
In an overnight address Zelenskyy warned that thousands of people, including children, were still in the battleground areas of the Donetsk region.
“There’s already a governmental decision about obligatory evacuation from Donetsk,” Zelenskyy said, underscoring authorities’ calls to leave the besieged region in recent weeks.
“Leave, we will help,” Zelenskyy said. “At this stage of the war, terror is the main weapon of Russia.”
Official Ukrainian estimates put the number of civilians still living in the unoccupied area of Donetsk at between 200,000 and 220,000.
A mandatory evacuation notice posted Saturday evening said the coming winter made it a matter of urgency, particularly for the more than 50,000 children still in the region.
Kateryna Novakivska, a deputy commander of a Ukrainian unit, said she was fighting so her comrades could be reunited with their families.
“The morale of our servicemen is at a high level now, but everyone wants to visit their homes, see their relatives and loved ones,” she said.
The intense bombardments around Ukraine come as the authorities push to restart grain exports under a plan brokered by the UN and Turkey to lift a Russian naval blockade.
A spokesman for the Turkish presidency said there was a “high probability” that a first ship carrying Ukrainian grain could leave Ukraine on Monday.
For all the latest world News Click Here
