The city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine has been the target of a massive Russian bombardment, likely “the heaviest” since the war began in February, which killed two, authorities said on Sunday.
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“Mykolayiv was heavily shelled today. Probably the loudest so far,” the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, wrote on Telegram, after which “powerful explosions” could be heard twice in the night from Saturday to Sunday.
The region’s governor, Vitali Kim, reported two deaths, some civilians, in these strikes.
Other strikes hit Kharkiv (east) and Sumy (northeast) regions.
Some buildings were damaged in “a series of explosions” in Kharkiv, said the mayor of Ukraine’s second largest city, Igor Terekhov.
One person was killed and two injured in the Sumy region, which has been the target of “more than 50 attacks” in the past 24 hours, according to Governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, where Moscow focuses the bulk of its attacks, said three civilians were killed and eight wounded on Saturday.
On Saturday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the population to evacuate the Donetsk region in the east of the country, whose cities have been the target of deadly bombardments, in order to escape “Russian terror”.
“Hundreds of thousands of people and children are still in the areas of fierce fighting in the Donetsk region (…) The more people leave the Donetsk region now, the fewer the Russian army will kill,” he said, assuring that a government decision on the ” Forced evacuation” of the region had been taken.