Ukrainian authorities across the country have reported new Russian rocket attacks and shelling that have killed at least 16 civilians.
The deaths fell after Russia’s top army announced it was stepping up its attack on its neighboring country.
Russian officials said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has issued instructions to further intensify the actions of units in all operational areas to rule out the possibility of the Kiev regime carrying out massive missile and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions. ”
The new Russian attacks hit areas in the north, east and south of Ukraine.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has experienced particularly heavy bombing in recent days, with Ukrainian officials and local commanders expressing fears that a second large-scale Russian attack on the northern city is imminent.
A Russian rocket attack on the northern Ukrainian town of Chuhuiv, close to Kharkiv and just 120 kilometers from the Russian border, killed at least three civilians and injured three more on Saturday, a regional police chief said.
Serhiy Bolvinov, the deputy chief of Kharkov’s regional police, said the rockets partially destroyed a two-storey apartment building.
“Four Russian missiles, believed to have been fired at night around (the Russian city of) Belgorod, at about 3:30 a.m., hit a residential building, a school and administrative buildings,” Bolvinov wrote on Facebook.
“The bodies of three people were found under the rubble. Three more were injured. The victims are civilians,” he added.
In the neighboring Sumy region, a civilian was killed and at least seven others were injured after Russians opened mortar and artillery fire on three towns and villages not far from the Russian border, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said on Telegram.
Seven civilians have been killed and 14 injured in attacks on cities in the disputed eastern region of Donetsk in the past 24 hours, the governor said on Saturday morning.
Nearby, however, Ukrainian forces repulsed a Russian nighttime attack on a strategic eastern highway, said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region.
Haidai said Russia has been trying to seize the main road link between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut for more than two months.
“They still don’t control several miles of this road,” Haidai wrote in a Telegram message.
Russia’s military campaign has targeted the Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but Russian forces have stormed other parts of the country as well in a relentless effort to take territory from Ukraine and boost the morale of its leaders, troops and civilians.
In southern Ukraine, two people were injured by Russian shelling in the town of Bashtanka, northeast of the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, according to regional governor Vitaliy Kim.