War in Ukraine: Russian missiles kill two and wound six

A Russian rocket attack on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine killed two people and a drone attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv injured at least six people, local authorities said on Sunday. The latest attacks occurred as Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter in Ukraine and Russia.

“In Pokrovsk, a rocket attack killed two people and damaged a house,” Vadim Filashkin, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region, said in a Telegram message. The town of Pokrovsk is about 60 kilometers northwest of the city of Donetsk, the capital of the Russian-controlled region that Moscow says it has annexed.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched 24 Iranian drones (Shahed) over its territory overnight, 23 of which were shot down. “The house and outbuildings burned down as a result of attacks from Shahid. Six people were injured, including a little girl born in 2015,” Kharkov Governor Oleg Sinegubov said on Telegram.

The Russian army, for its part, said it had captured a new village in the east of the country, Otcheretino, in a new sign of an advance by Moscow’s forces against the Ukrainian army. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that its soldiers had “completely liberated” the village in the Donetsk region, located northwest of Avdeevka, a town that fell in February. On Thursday his army said it had captured Berdich, also near Avdiivka.

Religion to unify society

In both Moscow and Ukraine, leaders used religion and the institution of the church to rally public support for the war effort. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky published a video message on Sunday from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, in the center of the capital. Having replaced his usual military clothes with a traditional Ukrainian shirt, he called God an “ally” of Ukraine. “With such an ally, life will definitely conquer death,” he said. In the cathedral, an exhibition displays religious icons painted on ammunition boxes.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin did not directly mention the war, which Russia calls a “special military operation,” in his Easter message. In a public address to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who strongly supports Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin thanked him for his “fruitful cooperation in the current difficult period, since it is so important for us to unite our efforts for the constant development and strengthening of the Motherland “