“Ukraine holds the initiative and is in the process of securing a major victory in Kherson,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in a briefing note Thursday. “The major Ukrainian victory underway in Kherson Oblast will not be Ukraine’s last.”
The note pointed out that the wet, muddy weather that so badly affected Russian supply lines at the start of the war in February had returned, adding that Ukraine’s harsh frozen winter could again hamper the Kremlin’s goals.
Despite Ukrainian gains the war is far from over. Russia is firing a staggering 20,000 artillery rounds per day, according to a senior U.S. defense official, while Ukraine is firing from 4,000 to 7,000 rounds daily.
And the toll on civilians shows no signs of easing.
At least six people were killed and three injured in a Russian missile attack just after 3 a.m. on an apartment block in the city of Mykolaiv, about 55 miles west of Kherson city, local officials said.
“It’s the next war crime of the Russian occupants, we have six victims and it’s just civilians,” Dmytro Pletenchuk, spokesperson for the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration, told NBC News at the scene.
There have only been 45 days without any shelling in Mykolaiv since the war began, he said. Russia has consistently denied targeting civilians.
Ludmyla, 54, a kindergarten teacher who lives in the block of apartments that was shelled overnight, but spent the night in another part of the city, said: “I saw on the internet that the whole world saw that it was our house that got hit. We are fine, we are alive but it is very, very sad for the people who have died.”
As the cleanup operation continued and the dead were carried out of the building in body bags, residents salvaged what they could from their damaged homes, while a local charity handed out food. Local children, oblivious to the horrors around them, fed pigeons and played on swing sets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the residential attack was a “cynical response” to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield.
“Russia does not give up its despicable tactics. And we will not give up our struggle. The occupiers will be held to account for every crime against Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Henry Austin contributed.
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