KYIV: Russian long-range strikes killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 20 others in several areas of Ukraine on Friday, Ukraine’s presidential office said, as a senior Moscow official warned that the Kremlin’s forces were prepared for an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
Five persons died in Kostiantynivka, a town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, when a Russian missile hit an aid station. Ukrainian authorities last year established hundreds of so-called “points of invincibility”, where residents hard-pressed by the war could warm up, charge their cellphones and get snacks.
Two civilians were killed and nine were wounded in the Sumy province town of Bilopillia by a nighttime rocket and artillery barrage and air strikes, the administration of the northeast region said.
In the southern Kherson region, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited on Thursday, Russian shelling killed one person in the main city, also called Kherson, and killed another person and wounded four others in the town of Bilozerka.
On Wednesday, a Russian drone attack struck a high school and dormitories south of Kyiv, killing at least nine persons. Ukrainian forces are poised to use the improved spring weather and the arrival of modern weapons supplied by its Western allies, including tanks and ammunition, to launch a counteroffensive aimed at dislodging Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine.