The two Iskander-M Iskander missiles that stroke Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday killed at least one person and injured 14 people that were admitted to the hospital with medium and light injuries, the city’s deputy mayor Marharyta Idrisova said Monday.
More than 30 buildings were damaged in the strike on the city 40 kilometers from the front lines which has seen an uptick in missile and air strikes as Russian troops were trying to weaken Ukrainian army defenses in Donetsk.
At least 353 Ukrainian children have died and more than 665 have been injured due to Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office said on Monday, with most injuries reported in Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kyiv.
According to Ukraine’s state emergency service, six people were killed on Monday in the Russian shelling of the town of Toretsk in the Donetsk region.
More than ten settlements north of the city of Sloviansk had come under fire while the shelling of the Ukrainian military’s defenses across Donetsk is continuing, but officials emphasized that they have foiled the renewed attempts by Russian forces to win territory.
On top of persisting with a ground assault to the east of the city of Lysychansk, which they took last month, Russians continued to shell areas along the border of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Meanwhile, DW has quoted the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) research group as saying that Russia’s forces may have been ordered to seize the city of Kharkiv and the rest of the unoccupied Kharkiv region despite the highly slim chances of success.
The idea is backed up by the fact that even though it has limited significance for defending Russian territory, Russian forces have recently tried to take the town of Dementiivka, to the north of Kharkiv city which, according to the Russian-backed authorities of the Kharkiv region, is an inalienable part of the Russian land.