Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar has killed five people, as Moscow’s troops pushed ahead in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The attack struck a high-rise building and a private home, said regional governor Vadym Filaskhin, who said the victims were men aged 24 to 38.
He urged the last remaining residents to leave the front-line town, which had a pre-war population of 12,000.
Mr Filaskhin wrote on social media: “Normal life has been impossible in Chasiv Yar for more than two years. Do not become a Russian target – evacuate.”
A further two people were killed by Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region. One victim was pulled from the rubble of a house in the village of Cherkaska Lozova, said governor Oleh Syniehubov, while a second woman died of her injuries while being transported to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Russia’s ministry of defence said its forces had captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.
Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defence in the area.
At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since the Second World War.
The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.
Elsewhere, the number of wounded following a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday continued to rise.
Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city, said regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. Writing on social media on Saturday, he said that the number of injured had risen from 47 to 96.
Mr Syniehubov also confirmed that the 12-storey apartment block that was hit by one bomb strike, setting the building ablaze and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, would be partly demolished.
Ukrainian officials have previously pointed to the Kharkiv strikes as further evidence that Western partners should scrap restrictions on what the Ukrainian military can target with donated weapons.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov said that Kyiv had presented Washington with a list of potential long-range targets within Russia for its approval.
Rescue operations continue in Kharkiv at the sites struck by Russian bombs. Tragically, there are fatalities, including a child—a girl named Sofia, who would have turned 15 this fall. My deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. Many others are injured. Aid is being… pic.twitter.com/ZU9flEw0Pd
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 30, 2024
“I hope we were heard,” he said.
He also denied speculation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to dismiss the commander of the country’s air force on Friday was directly linked to the destruction of an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners four days earlier.
The order to dismiss Lt Gen Mykola Oleshchuk was published on the presidential website minutes before an address which saw Mr Zelensky stress the need to “take care of all our soldiers”.
“This is two separate issues,” said Mr Umerov. “At this stage, I would not connect them.”
The number of injured also continued to rise in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where five people were killed on Friday by Ukrainian shelling, said governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
He said 46 people had been injured, of whom 37 were in the hospital, including seven children. Writing on social media, Mr Gladkov also said that two others had been injured in Ukrainian shelling across the region.
