Nine Ukrainians, including four children, were injured in a Russian bombing raid on the city of Voznesensk, located near a nuclear power plant in the Mykolaiv region, on Saturday, regional governor Vitaly Kim said.
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From the ages of three to 17, “all children are in a serious condition,” Mr Kim wrote on Telegram, saying one girl lost an eye in the attack.
Voznesensk is about twenty kilometers as the crow flies from the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Privdennooukraïnsk and about 70 kilometers from Mykolaiv.
The strike hit an apartment building and several houses in Voznesensk, which has around 30,000 residents, the state rescue service said on Facebook, posting images of a burned-out building.
The Mykolaiv region, which regularly faces heavy Russian bombardments, is close to the Kherson region, which has been almost completely occupied by Russian troops since Moscow attacked Ukraine in late February.
“Voznesensk. The terrorist country called Russia hit a residential building,” the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration Andriï Yermak denounced on Telegram.
“Our job is to ensure that not only today’s generation of Russians are held accountable, but also their children and grandchildren. Russia will pay for everything,” he added.
The Ukrainian army also said in a telegram in the morning that it shot down four Russian Kalibr cruise missiles near the city of Dnipro (central east), which were fired from the Black Sea using an S-300 anti-aircraft system.
For his part, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, a Russian-held city in the Kherson region, Ivan Fedorov, told Telegram this morning that Ukrainians had bombed a Russian military base in that occupied city.
On the ground, the Ukrainian army has reported on Russian offensive attempts, particularly in the Donetsk region, near the towns of Bakhmout, Zaïtsevé and Kodema. “Fighting continues,” Ukraine’s armed forces staff said in a statement this morning.