As Russia continues shelling, Pope Francis urges peace in Ukraine
Over the weekend, Russian forces reportedly launched dozens of attacks on various parts of Ukraine.
Weekend shelling by Russian forces has killed at least seven civilians, Ukrainian officials have reported, as Pope Francis used his traditional Easter message to highlight the war in Ukraine.
While Russia continued to concentrate on seizing all of Ukraine’s industrial east, two other provinces – Kharkiv in the northeast and Zaporizhia in the southeast – came under missile, rocket and artillery fire, the Ukrainian military reported on Sunday.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said two men died on Sunday in shelling in Kupiansk, a city Russia held before Ukrainian forces regained control of almost all of the province.
The city remained under attack later Sunday as Russian forces targeted residential areas with multiple rocket launchers, Syniehubov said.
Elsewhere in the province, a 30-year-old man was hospitalised in serious condition after Russian shelling of the city of Chuhuiv, he said on Telegram.
A 50-year-old man and his 11-year-old daughter were killed after Russian forces struck a residential building early on Sunday in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the capital of Zaporizhia province, according to City Council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev.
The Zaporizhia region’s Governor Yurii Malashko said 18 communities were shelled. Three people were killed, and five were wounded on Saturday, Malashko said.
Zaporizhia is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and is one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in September. Since then, Russia’s military has sought to remove Ukraine’s troops from those areas, especially Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which make up the industrial region known as the Donbas.
Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk, has seen the 13-month war’s longest battle. Western analysts have said Russian forces recently entered the city’s centre. Seizing Bakhmut after more than eight months would give the Kremlin a badly wanted victory and a path to push on towards bigger Ukrainian-held cities.
The Russian army is moving elite units to Bakhmut, Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, said Sunday.
