Deadly Russian attacks target military bases in central Ukraine

Russian attacks on military installations and residential buildings in war-torn Ukraine on Thursday left several dead in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “missile terrorism.”

The deadliest attacks to hit the central Kyrovograd region came as the country celebrated its first day of Ukrainian statehood, previously announced by Zelenskyy.

Russia’s invasion has turned into a grueling war of attrition and front-line artillery fire. Both sides smash targets from behind the lines to impair the other’s ability to fight a protracted conflict.

“Twenty-five people have been transferred to medical facilities and are being treated. Five are dead,” said the region’s governor, Andriy Raikovich, in a video on his social media.

The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Raikovich as saying that 12 soldiers were among the wounded.

City officials said the attacks on the region’s administrative center, Kropyvnytskyi, damaged “aviation equipment”, planes and nearby buildings, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

Kropyvnytskyi is about 300 kilometers south of the capital Kyiv and three people, including a Ukrainian soldier, were killed in Russian attacks on railway and military infrastructure over the weekend.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks reported earlier Thursday destroyed a building at a military base north of Kyiv.

Senior Ukrainian military official Oleksiy Gromov said the rockets, which hit the city 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Kyiv, were fired from the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

At least one person was killed and two others injured in a strike in the central Dnipro region, its governor Valentin Reznichenko said on social media.

“It’s a restless morning. Rocket terror again. We will not give up,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.

Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February, displacing millions and killing thousands more.

Moscow’s forces initially tried unsuccessfully to seize control of Kyiv and the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and have since focused on seizing the eastern Donbass region.

There, in the city of Toretsk, Russia launched deadly attacks on a five-story apartment building.

“Rescuers today found and removed the remains of two people – a man and a woman. In total, two people died and three were rescued,” regional emergency services said.

They added separately that the number of strikes at a hotel in the Donbass city of Bakhmut under Ukrainian control a day earlier rose to four.

AFP journalists in the region reported that Bakhmut and nearby Siversk had also experienced power outages following strikes in the region.

While fighting has focused on the eastern Donbass region since February, Ukrainian forces are also building momentum in their counter-offensive on the southern Kherson region.

In the neighboring southern Mykolaiv region — key in deploying efforts to retake Kherson — one person was wounded and a school building was destroyed after “extensive” shelling, Governor Vitaliy Kim said.