A Russian strike killed 25 civilians when rockets hit a train station and a residential area in eastern Ukraine, officials in the capital Kyiv said, as the nation celebrated its Independence Day under heavy shelling. The death toll rose from 22 initially reported after three more bodies were pulled from the rubble in the town of Chaplyne as rescue operations there ended, an aide to Ukraine’s president, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Thursday. The Vyshgorod region, just north of Kiev, was also hit by rockets, but no casualties were reported, regional official Olexiy Kuleba told the Telegram channel. The missile attacks and shelling of front-line cities including Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Nikopol and Dnipro followed President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warnings of the risk of “despicable Russian provocations” ahead of Wednesday’s 31st anniversary of independence from the dominated from Moscow Soviet rule. August 24 also marked six months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, starting Europe’s most destructive conflict since World War II. As rescue operations wrapped up in Chaplyne, residents of the small town, located about 145 kilometers (90 miles) west of Russian-held Donetsk, mourned their loved ones amid the rubble of their destroyed homes. Local resident Sergiy lost his 11-year-old son in the strike. “We looked for him there in the ruins, and he was lying here. No one knew he was here. No one knew,” she said as she crouched next to his covered body. The Russian Defense Ministry had no immediate comment on the attack. Speaking in Uzbekistan, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu repeated Moscow’s line that it had deliberately slowed down what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine to avoid civilian casualties. Russia denies targeting civilians. He also said that the railway infrastructure is a legitimate target as it serves to supply Ukraine with Western weapons. Commenting on the attack, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Twitter: “Russia’s missile attack on a train station full of civilians in Ukraine fits a pattern of atrocities. We will continue, together with partners around the world, to stand with Ukraine and seek accountability for Russian officials.” Celebrations of Wednesday’s public holiday were canceled, but many Ukrainians marked the occasion by wearing embroidered shirts typical of the national dress. Ukraine declared independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union in August 1991, and its population voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum in December. Air raid sirens sounded at least seven times in Kyiv during the day, although there were no attacks. Ukrainian authorities said airstrike warnings were sounded 189 times across the country on Wednesday, more than at any other time during the six-month conflict. Zelensky and his wife, Olena, joined religious leaders for a service at Kiev’s 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral and laid flowers at a memorial to fallen soldiers. The 44-year-old leader said Ukraine would retake Russian-held areas of eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Far from the front lines
Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian drone in the Vinnytsia region while Russian missiles landed in the Khmelnytskyi region, regional authorities said, both west of Kiev and hundreds of kilometers from the front lines. No damage or casualties were reported. Citing local sources, public broadcaster Suspilne reported early Thursday explosions near the Antonivsky Bridge across the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, an important supply line for Russian troops in the region. Ukraine’s southern military command also reported missile attacks on the Nova Kakhovka dam at the crossing of the Dnipro River, another important Russian supply line in the Kherson region. Reuters was unable to verify the accounts on the battlefield. At a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia reiterated Moscow’s rationale for its actions, saying it aimed to “denazify and demilitarize” Ukraine to remove “obvious” security threats. in Russia. Moscow’s stance has been dismissed by Ukraine and the West as an untenable pretext for an imperialist war of conquest. US President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced nearly $3 billion in arms and equipment for Ukraine in Washington, bringing his administration’s total military aid commitment to more than $13.5 billion. Russia has made little progress in recent months after pushing its troops out of Kyiv in the first weeks of the war. Ukraine’s top military intelligence official, Kyrylo Budanov, said on Wednesday that Russia’s offensive was being slowed by low morale and physical fatigue in its ranks and Moscow’s “depleted” resource base. Russian forces have seized areas of the south, including those on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts and large swaths of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces that make up the eastern Donbas region. The war has killed thousands of civilians, forced more than a third of Ukraine’s 41 million people from their homes, left cities in ruins and roiled the global economy, creating shortages of basic food and driving up energy prices.
