Overnight missile and drone strikes on the front-line city of Zaporizhzhya in south-eastern Ukraine have resulted in at least one fatality, with 25 people injured, local authorities said on Thursday morning.
“Among them is a 2-month-old boy,” Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram. He published images of damaged residential buildings.
He also reported that an energy supply facility and a heat and power plant had been hit, adding that 20,000 people are without electricity and 17,000 without heating.
The authorities said that among the injured are personnel from the emergency services and repair crews for energy suppliers, who were attempting to repair the damage from the initial attack when they were caught by a second wave.
Fedorov reported that the overnight attack lasted a total of six hours.
Zaporizhzhya is located on Ukrainian-controlled territory only about 30 kilometres from the front. Russian troops repeatedly shell the city.
The Kremlin, which justifies its nearly three-year war with the protection of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, annexed the partially controlled territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya alongside Donetsk and Luhansk in the autumn of 2022.
For peace negotiations, Moscow demands the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all of Zaporizhzhya.
Captured Ukrainian soldiers allegedly killed in Donetsk
Authorities in Kiev said on Thursday they are investigating the alleged killing of six captured Ukrainian soldiers by Russian forces.
The public prosecutor’s office in Kiev said the killing of the prisoners of war is believed to have occurred when Russian troops captured a Ukrainian position in the eastern Donetsk region.
As in previous such cases, the suspicion is based on a video that has been circulating on social media networks. Russian soldiers are said to have filmed the act themselves.
The execution of prisoners of war is a grave violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime, the prosecutors noted in a statement.
It was not said when the killings took place.
With the relentless advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine, more and more Ukrainian soldiers are being executed, according to Kiev, even though they had surrendered to the Russians.
At least 109 prisoners of war had been demonstrably killed in such a manner in 2024, Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament, said shortly before the end of last year.
Troops in Donetsk in danger of being surrounded
Ukrainian troops are under threat of being surrounded by Russian forces on a section of the front in the Donbass region, a military official said on Thursday.
The situation near the town of Velyka Novosilka is difficult, an army spokesman said on Ukrainian television on Thursday.
“There is a risk of operational encirclement,” he said, explaining that Ukrainian troops are using artillery fire in a bid to prevent this.
Before the war, Velyka Novosilka was a rural town with a population of around 5,300. It marks the most south-westerly front-line area in Donetsk.
The town centre is still being defended by the Ukrainians.
Meanwhile authorities in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv have ordered the forced evacuation of 16 villages. Children and their families are to leave the areas because the Russian side has intensified its shelling.
In its situation report for Thursday afternoon, the Ukrainian General Staff listed 82 Russian attacks on all sections of the front in the east.
More than half of all attacks were aimed at the city of Pokrovsk and its surroundings, which has been under fire for months, the military wrote on Facebook.
A man inspects the destruction caused by a Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia. Russia launched four missiles early on Thursday, killing one person and injuring dozens. -/Ukrinform/dpa
