NOWHERE'S SAFE
Vengeful Russians blitz civilians in Ukraine with long-range missiles in revenge for warship attack
VENGEFUL Russians blitzed civilians in Ukraine with long-range missiles as they upped their attacks in retaliation for the sinking of their flagship.
They killed ten in a series of rocket strikes — but the Ukrainians launched a daring counter-assault to cut off the invaders’ supply lines.
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A pre-dawn barrage of five cruise missiles blasted Lviv, hitting buildings near a railway line in the evacuation hub, killing seven people and injuring eight others.
Three also died in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, as indiscriminate Grad missiles pounded people’s homes.
A shell fell on a children's playground killing a man and a woman.
Another hit an aid point killing one person and wounding six others.
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At least 18 people have now been killed in Kharkiv and more than 100 wounded since Thursday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Blasts were also reported in the central Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Russian, enraged at the sinking of Black Sea fleet flagship Moskva, claimed it had blasted Ukraine with precision-guided air-launched missiles, destroying command posts, fuel stores and ammunition depots.
Despite the relentless bombardments, Ukrainian forces hit back with counter- attacks.
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Kharkiv governor Oleh Synehubov said troops had repelled Russian forces from a number of villages, including Bazaliivka 25 miles south east of the city.
The Sun saw a downed Russian chopper in a field outside Mala Rohan where tyrant Vladimir Putin’s forces had been overrun.
And troops around Izyum, now a key Russian logistics hub, launched a successful two-pronged assault to surround Moscow’s forces massing for a dreaded second-wave assault.
The Russians overran the town after weeks of heavy fighting and have poured in tanks and heavy artillery ahead of a new onslaught to try to capture their coveted eastern Donbas region.
The Kremlin has said eastern Ukraine is now its primary target after its troops suffering catastrophic losses and were forced to retreat from around Kyiv.
But military expert Dr Mike Martin said: “It appears that the Russians have over stretched themselves over supply lines that they can’t defend.”
Izyum’s fate will be key to Russia’s ability to link up its troops in the north with soldiers in the south who have been fighting in the blitzed port city of Mariupol.
British military intelligence said the valiant defenders of Mariupol had played a vital role in saving Ukraine by “diverting men and material, slowing Russia's advance elsewhere”.
'CONSIDERABLE COST'
About 2,000 die-hard fighters are holed up in a sprawling steelworks protected by a network of underground tunnels and bunkers. The UK Ministry of Defence said: “Russian commanders will be concerned by the time it is taking to subdue Mariupol.”
But the terrible assault on the city had come “at considerable cost to its residents”.
It added: “Large areas of infrastructure have been destroyed whilst the population has suffered significant casualties.”
The mayor of Mariupol said bodies carpeted the streets and up to 20,000 people had died in a non-stop seven-week bombardment.
The Kremlin hoped to annihilate the bulk of the Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russia rebels in the Donbas since 2014 by cutting them off from behind. But the defence of Mariupol and the fights around Kharkiv and Izyum are scotching Putin’s battle plan.
Troops tied up there have been unable to push north.
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Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, warned Moscow was planning a sham referendum in occupied southern city Kherson next month to give its landgrab a fig-leaf of legitimacy.
Sources in Ukraine reassured the city’s residents an assault to free them would come at the right time.
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