The Russian military claimed on Tuesday that it targeted a Ukrainian military command center in Pokrovsk, after Ukraine accused it of shelling civilian buildings in the eastern town, killing seven people.
“In the area of ??the locality of Krasnoarmeisk (Soviet name of Pokrovsk, editor’s note) (…), an advanced command center of the Ukrainian group ‘Khortytsia’ was struck”, announced the spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Security. Defense, Igor Konashenkov.
Ukraine immediately accused the Russians of lying.
“It’s a complete lie,” Sergiy Tcherevaty, the spokesman for the command center for eastern Ukraine, told AFP, “from memory, this is the fourth time that they claim something something like that”.
Monday evening, a few tens of minutes apart, two Russian missiles fell on a block of buildings in the center of Pokrovsk, killing seven and injuring 81, according to the latest report given by the Ukrainian head of the military administration from Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
A dozen buildings that housed a hotel, cafes, other businesses, apartments and offices were hit, the same source added. But it was a five-story apartment building that was most affected by the first strike and the neighboring Druzhba Hotel in the second.
Interrupted during the night because of the risk of new bombardments, relief operations had resumed at dawn in this locality of 60,000 inhabitants before the war and located about forty kilometers from the eastern front.
AFP journalists present on Monday evening saw rescuers particularly active around the five-storey building, evacuating injured people from the middle of the rubble and bringing down some of its inhabitants trapped in their homes with the help of a large scale.
On the ground floor was the Corleone pizzeria, a popular place particularly frequented by journalists.
At the end of June in Kramatorsk, a city further north and also near the front line, a Russian missile also fell on a popular restaurant, killing 13 people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced an attack on “an ordinary residential building” on Monday evening, posting a video showing people being extracted from the rubble.
Among the injured are 31 police officers, seven employees of the state emergency service and four military personnel, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. The second strike occurred when the emergency services were already at work.
“Since the start of the massive invasion, 78 members of the state emergency services have been killed and 280 injured in repeated strikes by the Russians” on sites where relief workers were already deployed, told the press Oleksandr Khorounjiï, the spokesperson for this service.
“Russian terrorists cynically ignore all norms and rules of war,” he said.
On the military level, Russia assured on Monday that it had advanced towards Kupyansk, a city in eastern Ukraine located about 150 km north of Pokrovsk, in an area taken over last September by Ukrainian forces and facing a Russian offensive for several weeks.
Ukraine had admitted in mid-July to be in a “defense position” in the Kupyansk region, the Russian army having launched an offensive there.
Troops from kyiv began a massive counter-offensive in June to try to retake the eastern and southern territories occupied by the Russian army.
Progress has so far been quite limited, however, with the Russians having built strong defensive lines, made up of trenches, anti-tank booby traps and minefields.
The Kupyansk area and most of the Kharkiv region had been recaptured from the Russian army in September after a surprise offensive by Ukrainian forces.
Today it is one of the rare stretches of the front where Russia is on the offensive.
Moscow claims that Ukraine’s counter-offensive is a failure, while kyiv and the West point out that it must be given time, the fighting being very tough.
08/08/2023 14:30:37 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
