5 killed, at least 80 injured in southern Ukraine shelling – official
Five people have been killed and at least 80 injured in shelling in the city of Novaya Kakhovka by Ukrainian forces, a local Russian-appointed official said. The city is in Ukraine’s southern Kherson Region and is controlled by Moscow.
Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the region, also told RIA Novosti that seven people are missing.
Vladimir Leontyev, administration chief of Novaya Kakhovka, said that a fertilizer storage depot detonated from shelling on Monday, and multiple houses were damaged, as well as other civilian sites, including a market and a hospital.
Natalya Zarya, who coordinates the delivery of humanitarian aid to the city, said that a storage facility with 35 tons of aid, including food, has also been destroyed.
Local officials claimed that Ukrainian troops used US-provided HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to attack the city.
“Such strikes on civilian sites can only draw resolute condemnation. It is a direct consequence of the delivery of weapons by the [United] States to Kiev,” Dmitry Polyansky, the deputy head of Russia’s mission to the UN, told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that it destroyed an ammunition depot in Novaya Kakhovka.
Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of shelling residential areas and killing civilians.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
