A missile strike killed at least three people in a residential building in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Wednesday as Russian forces intensified their attacks on multiple fronts.
In the east, the governor of Luhansk province said there was “fighting everywhere” in the battle around the city of Lysychansk, which Russian troops were trying to encircle.
The governor of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine said Russian shelling had increased there too in the past few days.
“Several villages have been wiped from the face of the earth,” Oleksander Vilkul said.
The stepped-up attacks took place as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces make slow but inexorable progress in a conflict now in its fifth month.
Nonetheless, Western analysts say the Russians are taking heavy casualties and running through resources, while the prospect of more Western weapons supplies reaching Ukraine, including long-range missile systems, made Moscow’s need to consolidate any gains more urgent.
On the diplomatic front, leaders of NATO countries were meeting in the Spanish capital Madrid to thrash out policy in response to what Russia calls its “special military operation”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said members of the military alliance would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons for as long as necessary.
