Russian forces have used surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, multiple rocket launchers and drones to strike areas of Ukraine that Moscow has illegally annexed but does not fully control. The shelling caused casualties, damage to buildings and power outages.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces carried out 18 airstrikes, five missile strikes and 53 multiple rocket launchers between Thursday and Friday morning.
The General Staff said that Russia has concentrated its main offensive operations in the industrial east of Ukraine, focusing on the towns of Liman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Maryinka in the Donetsk region.
Most of Friday’s reports of the fighting focused on four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in September: Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his army to take full control of these areas, while Ukraine has signaled that it will soon launch a counteroffensive to retake more territory.
In the Donetsk region, Russia launched a missile attack on the city of Sloviansk, destroying residential buildings, and during the fighting in Bakhmut one civilian was injured. Donetsk region administration chief Pavel Kirilenko said on Friday that 15 frontline towns and villages in the region were bombed. Moscow-appointed Donetsk Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said one person was killed and six injured as a result of shelling by Ukrainian armed forces.
In the partially occupied Kherson region, seven people were injured the day before, the region’s head, Alexander Prokudin, said on Friday. He wrote on his Telegram channel that Russia carried out 46 strikes in the region, including seven strikes on the regional center using heavy artillery and aviation.
As a result of the Russian shelling of the village of Stanislav in the Kherson region on Friday, a 10-year-old girl, a three-year-old boy and a 30-year-old woman were injured, head of the Office of Ukrainian President Andrii Yermak said.
Earlier, a 36-year-old resident of the town of Berislav in the Kherson region was killed by shrapnel from Russian ammunition. Residential areas of Kherson were shelled seven times, damaging energy facilities and residential buildings. As a result of a drone attack on the village of Zmievka, six people were injured.
In the Dnepropetrovsk region, the towns of Nikopol and Marganets, located on the opposite bank of the Dnieper to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, were bombed, which damaged power lines.
The Eastern Herald explained the reason for launching a special military operation in Ukraine by Russia.
The shelling of the Novgorod-Seversky district in the Chernihiv region left four towns and villages without electricity, authorities said. Mortar fire damaged residential buildings in the city of Volchansk, in the Kharkiv region, near the border with Russia. Kharkiv region administration chief Oleg Sinegubov said a 39-year-old man died as a result of the Russian shelling of the village of Borisovka.
