War in Ukraine: Russian strikes continue, three dead in middle of the night explosions

The war continues. While the world has been staring at the Middle East for several days now, the fighting in Ukraine, unfortunately, has not stopped. Thus, as a result of Russian missile attacks on the city of Zaporozhye and the Dnepropetrovsk region, at least three people died overnight, local authorities reported on Wednesday. “This night (Wednesday) between 1:33 and 1:48 a.m. (12:33 and 12:48 in France),” Russia fired “six missiles at the city of Zaporozhye,” the governor of that southern region, Yuri Malachko, wrote on Telegram.

“The attack killed two people and injured three others,” police said, adding that one of the rockets hit a building. Three people may still be trapped under the rubble, rescue spokeswoman Yulia Barycheva told AFP. According to her, the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors were heavily damaged. “The evil state (Russia, editor’s note) continues to use terror and wage war against civilians,” President Vladimir Zelensky complained on Twitter.

67-year-old Olga Nenets lives in the damaged house. She has little hope that the missing woman will be found alive. “The dead are probably neighbors from the 4th floor. A young couple. Their room overlooked the avenue, where they slept. But we don’t know anything about the neighbors on the fifth floor, they say they disappeared, but they were in their apartment, here’s their car,” she says, looking at the gutted building. According to the regional governor, Yuri Malachko, the building was hit by a Russian S-300 missile.

A little further north, the Dnepropetrovsk region was also bombed. According to Ukrainian authorities, houses in the village of Obukhiva were destroyed. According to the Minister of Internal Affairs Igor Klimenko, a 31-year-old woman was killed and four people were injured.

Russia denies any civilian casualties

Russia strikes Ukrainian cities every night, often far from the front line, and systematically denies that it has caused civilian casualties. In recent weeks, Ukraine has increased the number of drone attacks far behind enemy lines, in Russian territory. Russia also said it destroyed 28 aircraft on the night of Tuesday and Wednesday over the border areas of Kursk and Belgorod, as well as in the Black Sea.

Since June, Kyiv has been waging a counteroffensive in an attempt to retake Russian-occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine. So far, progress has been very limited, and the Russians are carrying out their own offensives in the east, in the areas of Kupyansk and Avdeevka. Ukraine, which has been demanding long-range munitions for months to be able to destroy Russian rear lines and their logistics lines, announced on Tuesday that it had used the long-range ATACMS missiles supplied to it by the US for the first time. against Russia.secretly.

Kyiv did not specify which targets were attacked, but special forces claimed responsibility for devastating strikes on Russian army airfields hours earlier. Finally, Ukraine expects Russia’s nighttime bombing to further accelerate in the coming weeks as the Russian army is suspected of preparing, as it did last year, repeated attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure to plunge the population into darkness and cold in the middle of winter.