2023-08-19 13:54:51
Update
August 19, 2023
15:54
A Russian missile hit downtown Cherniguiv in northern Ukraine, killing at least seven people and injuring 110. Vladimir Putin had previously spoken with his generals, not far from the Ukrainian border.
A Russian missile hit downtown Cherniguiv in northern Ukraine on Saturday. leaving at least seven dead and 110 injuredaccording to local authorities, shortly after a summit meeting between Vladimir Putin and his generals, not far from the Ukrainian border. The UN called the attack “heinous”.
The Russian army also claimed having “eliminated” 150 Ukrainian soldiers who were trying to cross the Dnieper River, a frontline in southern Ukraine where kyiv is trying to break through Moscow’s defenses. “A Russian missile hit right in the city center, in our Cherniguiv,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky lamented on Telegram. “A square, the polytechnic university, a theatre. An ordinary Saturday, which Russia has turned into a day of pain and loss. There are dead, there are injured,” he added.
“We thought a balcony had collapsed. But when we came out, our window was smashed, there was smoke, people running around crying or moaning”
At least seven people were killed and 110 others injured in the Russian strike, according to a report communicated on Saturday by the acting mayor of the city. “One hundred and seventeen people were affected in the terrorist attack in downtown Cherniguiv. Seven of them died,” Oleksandre Lomako said on Telegram.
Zelensky in Sweden
The bombing has taken the population by surprise in a city spared in recent months from large-scale attacks, having been briefly surrounded by Russian forces at the start of the invasion in February 2022. “I’m still a bit in shock because it didn’t happen for a long time,” said Iryna, a 24-year-old waitress.
“It is heinous to attack the main square of a big city in the morning when people are walking, some going to church,” the humanitarian coordinator of the city said in a statement. l’ON in Ukraine, Denise Brown. “It has to stop”.
This bombardment took place after a series of military successes claimed this week by kyiv and while the The United States on Friday approved Denmark and the Netherlands to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
He has, moreover, produced when Volodymyr Zelensky was visiting Sweden, an allied country of kyiv which wishes to join NATO despite the virulent opposition of Moscow. Discussions with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson focus on “cooperation in terms of defense”, in particular the possible new delivery of Swedish infantry fighting vehicles CV-90s, detailed the Ukrainian president on Telegram.
Putin with his generals
The city of Cherniguiv was bombed shortly after a meetingannounced Saturday morning by the Kremlin, between Vladimir Putin and the generals in charge of the military operation in Ukraine in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, not far from the Ukrainian border.
Vladimir Putin rarely visits areas close to fighting in Ukraine.
The Russian authorities have not not specified when this meeting took placebut footage released by state media suggests it was held overnight in the southern city.
“The head of state listened to reports from Russian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, sector commanders and other officials,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Russian Intervention Operations Center in Ukraine, Rostov-on-the-Don had been the theater at the end of June of the spectacular mutiny of the mercenaries of Wagner, who had briefly seized the headquarters of the army in the city.
General Gerasimov has rarely been seen in public since that failed rebellion. As for Vladimir Putin, he rarely goes to areas close to fighting in Ukraine.
Drone attacks foiled
Saturday, the two camps also claimed to have repelled drone attackswhich are multiplying in a period when Ukraine is in full counter-offensive to recover all of its territory under Russian control.
The Russian army thus claimed to have foiled an attack against a military airfield in the Novgorod region, in northwestern Russia, and having neutralized another drone which targeted Moscow and its region.
“The air defense forces (…) suppressed it and, after losing control, it crashed in a deserted area near Putilkovo”, a locality in the northwestern suburbs of Moscow, said the army.
On their side, Ukrainian forces announced that they had destroyed “fifteen Russian drones” overnight, “launched from the Kursk region”, bordering Ukraine.
The Russian army also claimed on Saturday to have thwarted an attack by Kiev forces in Crimea – the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 -, carried out according to the Russian army “with an anti-aircraft missile from the S-200 air defense system “.
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