Airstrikes on buildings near Odessa kill 19 | War in Ukraine
The strike came after NATO pledged its unwavering support to Ukraine on Thursday at a summit in Madrid.
Au At least 19 people were killed in strikes on buildings in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine, an attack for which Moscow absolved itself.
On the night of Thursday to Friday, two missiles were fired by a strategic aircraft from the Black Sea, hitting buildings, according to Ukrainian emergency services.
Still provisional, the toll is 19 dead and 38 injured, including six children, said Sergiy Krouk, head of Ukraine's National Emergency Service.
La first strike hit a nine-storey residential building in Bilgorod-Dniester region, about 80 km south of Odessa, according to the Odessa region administration spokesman , Sergei Brachuk.
In the Kremlin, spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the subject, assured that the armed forces of Russia do not operate on civilian targets in Ukraine.
In Berlin , the government condemned the attack.
“The Russian side, again talking about collateral damage, is inhumane and cynical.
—Steffen Hebestreit, German government spokesperson
Ukraine also welcomed the departure of Russian forces from Serpents' Island, which they had taken in the first hours of their offensive, a highly symbolic victory. for kyiv.
This militarized islet is located southwest of Odessa, the largest Ukrainian port where millions of tons of grain have been collected, and facing the #x27;mouth of the Danube.
Snake Island is a strategic point and this significantly changes the situation in the Black Sea, President Voldymyr Zelensky said.
According to the Ukrainian military, the Russians abandoned Serpents' Island because they found themselves unable to withstand the fire of our artillery, missiles and airstrikes.
Moscow instead claims to have withdrawn its troops as a sign of goodwill, having achieved its objectives, adding that this withdrawal would facilitate Ukrainian grain exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea.
However, the UK Ministry of Defense deemed the withdrawal likely motivated by the isolation of the troops and their growing vulnerability [to] Ukrainian strikes and not as a sign of goodwill.
The Ukrainian president admitted that the situation remained extremely difficult in Lyssytchansk, a city in the industrial basin of Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine where most of the fighting is concentrated.
The [Russian] forces arrived at the gates of Lysychansk. The Ukrainian army is suffering heavy losses, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Evacuation from Lysychansk is not possible at the moment, because the Russians are trying to encircle our army from the south and west near the city, Sergei Gaïdaï, governor of the Lugansk region, said on Telegram.
Lyssychansk is the last major city not yet in Russian hands in the Lugansk region, one of the two provinces of Donbass, which Moscow intends to fully control.
In the Kharkiv region, Governor Oleg Sinegoubov on Friday reported four dead and three injured in the past 24 hours, including three dead and two injured in Izium and one dead and one injured in Chuhouiv.
In southern Kherson, Ukrainian helicopters hit a concentration of enemy military troops and equipment near Bilozerka, the Ukrainian military said on Friday, reporting 35 Russian soldiers dead and enemy armor destroyed.
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There is no overall civilian death toll from the conflict. On the military side, Western security sources now suggest 15,000 to 20,000 the number of Russian soldiers killed.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are losing around 100 soldiers every day, according to kyiv.
No independent figures are available.
More than six million Ukrainians are internally displaced, according to a new count on Tuesday from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees of the United States. x27;UN.
They join the more than 5.2 million Ukrainians registered as refugees in other European states since the start of the conflict on February 24.
In addition, nearly 16 million people in Ukraine today need humanitarian aid in the form of water, food [and] health services, estimated Thursday Osnat Lubrani, the humanitarian coordinator of the ;UN in the country.
On the diplomatic front, European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen, speaking by video to the Ukrainian parliament on Friday, called on the latter to speed up its reforms against corruption, as part of its candidacy for president. x27;European Union accepted last week by the leaders of the 27 Member States of the Union.
NATO had pledged its unwavering support to Ukraine , Thursday, at a summit in Madrid.
Several NATO member states have announced new military aid to Ukraine. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged an extension of 1 billion pounds (1.56 billion Canadian dollars), and Joe Biden has announced an additional 800 million dollars (1.2 billion Canadian dollars).
The entire Alliance will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes to ensure it is not defeated by Russia , said US President Joe Biden. It will not end with a defeat for Ukraine.
Moscow retorted through the voice of its foreign minister. The Iron Curtain, in fact, is already falling, said Sergei Lavrov, using this expression born with the Cold War and falling into disuse after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
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He was reacting to the strategic roadmap just adopted by the Atlantic Alliance, which now identifies Russia as the most significant and direct threat to the security of the members of NATO.
