Russian air strikes on Ukraine and Ukrainian bombing of Russian soil have intensified in recent weeks, while Kiev confirms that it is preparing for a major offensive against Moscow’s forces with the aim of regaining the lands it lost since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
A two-year-old girl was killed and 22 other people were wounded in an air strike in Dnipro, central Ukraine, on Saturday night, Ukrainian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians of “attacking the city”.
The governor of the Dnipro region, Sergei Lysak, said in a message on the Telegram application on Sunday that the bombing hit two two-storey residential buildings, 10 houses, a shop and a gas pipeline.
He added that “the body of a girl was recovered from under the rubble of a house in the Bydorodninska area,” explaining that she “had just reached the age of two.”
“22 people were wounded, including five children,” he added. He had spoken of three boys in serious condition in hospital.
Zelensky held Russia responsible for the bombing. “The Russians attacked the city,” Zelensky wrote on Facebook on Saturday. “They hit two residential buildings of two floors. Unfortunately, there are people trapped under the rubble,” he added.
“Russia proves once again that it is a terrorist state,” he stressed. He added, “Russia will bear responsibility for everything that is committed against our country and our people.”
The Ukrainian president released a video showing rescuers searching the destroyed building and the roar of industrial excavators.
In Kiev, the head of the local military administration said that the capital’s air defenses had intercepted a number of missiles and drones. “According to preliminary information, no air target has reached the capital,” Serhiy Popko wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
He added that “the air defense forces destroyed everything heading to the city from a distance, and for the second night in a row, the people of Kiev did not hear explosions over their heads.”
Russian air strikes on Ukraine and Ukrainian bombing of Russian soil have intensified in recent weeks, while Kiev confirms that it is preparing for a major attack against Moscow’s forces with the aim of regaining the lands it lost since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
On the other side of the border, Ukrainian shells killed two people Saturday in Belgorod, Russia, the region’s governor said.
The border villages in this region have been subjected to unprecedented artillery shelling in recent days, which resulted, after Saturday’s shelling, in the fall of seven people this week.
