Russia Rains Missiles Down on Residential Areas of Eastern Donetsk Region in Ukraine

Russian rockets hit the eastern Ukraine town of Chasiv Yar, destroying a five-story apartment building and killing at least 15 people, officials said Sunday.Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, said about three dozen people could be trapped in the rubble. Rescuers have made contact with two people who are under the wreckage, he said on the Telegram messaging app.The Ukrainian emergency services initially gave a death toll of six, but later said it rose to 10 and then 15. They did not say how many people may still be in the rubble.Kyrylenko said the town of about 12,000 was hit by Uragan rockets, which are fired from truck-borne systems. Chasiv Yar is about 12 miles southeast of Kramatorsk, a city that is expected to be a major target of Russian forces as they grind westward.The Donetsk region is one of two provinces along with Luhansk that make up the Donbas region, where separatist rebels have fought Ukrainian forces since 2014. Last week, Russia captured the city of Lysychansk, the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk. Russian forces are raising “true hell” in the Donbas, despite assessments they were taking an operational pause, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said Saturday.After the seizure of Lysychansk, some analysts predicted Moscow’s troops likely would take some time to rearm and regroup.But “so far there has been no operational pause announced by the enemy. He is still attacking and shelling our lands with the same intensity as before,” Mr. Haidai said. He later said the Russian bombardment of Luhansk was suspended because Ukrainian forces had destroyed ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians.There are also indications that Moscow seeks to tighten its grip on Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. On Saturday the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported that the Russian-backed occupation authorities in the Kharkiv region stated that the region, which is close to the Russian border, is an “inalienable part of Russian land.”According to the ISW’s assessment “the Kharkiv Oblast occupation government’s speed in establishing a civilian administration on July 6 and introducing martial law in occupied Kharkiv Oblast on July 8 further indicates that the Kremlin is aggressively pursuing the legitimization and consolidation of the Kharkiv Oblast occupation administration’s power to support this broader territorial aim.”On Sunday, in addition to the deadly missile strikes in eastern Ukraine, missiles were fired at a residential area in central Kharkiv. London’s Independent reported that Oleh Synyehubov, the Kharkiv Oblast’s Ukrainian governor, said at least four people were injured after a Russian Isklander missile struck a residential area of the city. The day prior, the AFP reported that a rocket tore through a two-story residential building, which Ukrainian emergency services said wounded six civilians, four of whom had to be hospitalized.Also on Saturday, AFP reported that Russia’s defense ministry said that it had inflicted heavy losses in the Mykolaiv and Dnepropetrovsk regions, in southern and central Ukraine respectively.At Kharkiv, as if to underscore the Kremlin’s intention to bring the region into its fold not only by rocket fire but by also means more subtle, the occupation authorities also reportedly unveiled a new flag which features the Russian imperial double-headed eagle along with symbols from the 18th-century Kharkiv coat of arms.

Russia Rains Missiles Down on Residential Areas of Eastern Donetsk Region in Ukraine

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