Russian missiles slam into city far behind Ukraine front lines

Kyiv — Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia far behind the front lines on Thursday in an attack that Ukrainian officials said had left at least 12 people dead, including a child.

The strike, which Ukraine said had also wounded dozens of people, came a day after a breakthrough in talks between Moscow and Kyiv to unblock Ukrainian grain exports and underscored how far the two countries remain from any peace settlement despite progress in those negotiations.

“There are wounded and dead, among them a small child,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?”

The Russian defence ministry, which denies targeting civilians, did not immediately comment on the strike. Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, says its aim is to degrade Ukraine’s military infrastructure to protect its own security.

Vinnytsia lies about 200km southwest of the capital Kyiv and is far from the main front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The Russian strike hit the car park of the nine-storey “Yuvelirniy” office block at about 7.50am GMT, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. It published photographs showing smoke rising from the twisted remains of burnt-out cars and smouldering rubble nearby.

Video footage posted on Telegram by Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian politician, showed thick black smoke billowing from a tall building.

Eastern front

Ukraine said it had repelled attempted Russian ground assaults on the front lines hundreds of kilometres to the east, after Moscow focused its fire on and around two towns there, which it views as springboards to taking control of bigger cities.

After its early attempts at a quick war failed, Russia switched to pursuing a campaign of attrition designed to wear down Ukrainian forces and minimise casualties on its own side while shelling towns and cities it wants to capture.

Ukraine, with the help of recently acquired US Himars mobile rocket systems, has begun to strike targets deep inside Russian-controlled territory and says it is destroying ammunition dumps and reducing Russia’s ability to wage war.

Daniil Bezsonov, a Russian-backed official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on Thursday that its armed forces and Russia were focusing their fire on the towns of Siversk and Soledar in eastern Ukraine.

“Siversk is under our operational control which means we can strike the enemy wherever they are,” he told the Solovyov Live online TV channel.

He made clear, however, that both towns were still held by Ukrainian forces. The Russian plan, he said, was to seize the two towns and then attack the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the east.

The Ukrainian military, which reported Russian shelling and air strikes on Siversk and Kramatorsk, said it was holding the line on all fronts and that it was repelling all attempted assaults.

The town of Soledar, seen as a gateway to the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Kramatorsk, had been bombed too, the Ukrainian military said.

Britain’s defence ministry said Russian forces appeared to be struggling to make headway in eastern Ukraine as the war grinds into a sixth month because they have been unable to marshal the critical mass needed to advance.

“In the Donbas, Russian forces continue to conduct artillery strikes across a broad front followed by, in some areas, probing assaults by small company and platoon-sized units,” the ministry said in a statement.

“However, they have achieved no significant territorial advances over the last 72 hours and are in danger of losing any momentum built up following the capture of Lysychansk.”

Reuters