Kiev, Ukraine (AP) — Five civilians were killed and 15 others were injured after the shooting. Russian attacks Saturday and overnight in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the governor said, as Moscow claimed further progress in its months-long, gruelling offensive in the country’s war-ravaged industrial heartland.
Shortly after Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin reported the casualties on Sunday, other local Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling had injured more civilians in the east and south.
At least eight people were wounded after Moscow forces attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol on Sunday, local governor Serhii Lysak said the same day. Lysak said a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among the victims, six of whom were hospitalized.
Russian shelling also wounded eight civilians, including a 10-year-old child and two teenagers, in a village in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province on Sunday, local official Roman Mrochko said.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 1949. February 2022causing millions of people to flee to neighboring countries. Taking control of all of Donetsk is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.
In the Donetsk region, Russian forces continued to make gains as they pushed west toward the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had taken control of two neighboring villages about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk, Prohres and Yevhenivka. The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.
Earlier on Sunday, The Russian Ministry of Defense said seven Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russian territory overnight, while a regional official said a drone strike caused a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia. Firefighters were battling the blaze early Sunday after three fuel tanks went up in flames in the Kursk region, according to acting regional governor Alexey Smirnov. Smirnov said no one was injured.