A “massive attack” with Russian missiles left this Sunday six killed in Konstantinovka, near Bakhmutin eastern Ukraine, on the same day as President Volodimir Zelensky commemorated the anniversary of the Bucha massacre praising the Ukrainian resistance.
The sad anniversary comes the day after Russia assumed the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, which kyiv called a “slap” to diplomacy.
“Ukrainian people! They stopped the greatest force against humanity of our time. They stopped a force that they despise and that wants to destroy everything that matters to the people,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
On the front, around Bakhmut, which has been the epicenter of the fighting for months, there were heavy clashes.
The situation in the region “remains very tense,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister said Sunday. Ganna Maliar.
“The enemy is employing not only the fighters of (the paramilitary organization) Wagner, but also the units of professional paratroopers. The casualties, [incluso si son] excessively high, they do not stop the enemy,” he added.
Russia “continues to concentrate the bulk of its efforts on offensive actions in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka sectors,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian army reported in the afternoon, assuring that “numerous enemy attacks on Bakhmut had been repelled.
On the same day, some 27 kilometers from this ruined city, in Konstantinovka, Russian shelling left six people dead – three men and three women – and eleven wounded, the Ukrainian authorities announced.
Journalists from the AFP agency saw a large crater in the middle of a residential courtyard and windows broken from the ground floor to the upper floors in two 14-story buildings, while the roofs of neighboring houses were smashed.
Police claimed that Russia carried out a “massive attack” in the morning, in total six S-300 and Hurricane missiles.
“Sixteen apartment buildings, eight private residences, a kindergarten, an administrative building, three cars and a gas pipeline” were affected, it added.
lilia, a 19-year-old psychology student and resident of one of the damaged buildings, was “shocked.” “I’m very lucky I wasn’t home right now,” she told the AFP.
Zelensky praised this Sunday the Ukrainians who resisted against “the greatest force against humanity” of the present time, on the first anniversary of the discovery of the Bucha massacre.
The town, a northern suburb of kyiv that had 37,000 inhabitants before the war, became a symbol of atrocities attributed to the invading troops.
kyiv estimates the number of civilians killed in the district during the Russian occupation at “more than 1,400”, including 37 children.
Moscow denies any involvement in the deaths of the civilians and affirms that it was a “staging” by kyiv and its allies.
“We will liberate all our lands. We will put the Ukrainian flag back in all our cities and towns,” Zelensky added.
Russia still controls more than 18% of the Ukrainian territory.
“Russian evil will fall, precisely here in Ukraine, and it will no longer be able to rise,” he declared together with the prime ministers of Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia and the president of Moldova.
The soldiers will continue “fighting for the independence of our nation,” said the head of the army, Valery Zaluzhny.
The anniversary of the finding of the Bucha massacre comes at a time of little progress or setbacks on the front, which stretches from the east to the south of the country.
Since the beginning of the year, the troops in Moscow hardly claimed any progress. The few that were recorded occurred around the city of Bakhmut, in the eastern Donbas basin, partially occupied by pro-Russian separatist forces since 2014.
With information from AFP
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Source-www.infobae.com