World
Russia launches widespread shelling, says Ukraine
Russia opened fire with artillery, multiple rocket launchers and tanks around Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv and shelled cities in the east, where an earlier strike killed 15 people in an apartment building, Ukraine’s general staff said on Monday.
An apartment building in Kharkiv was hit by a missile overnight, but no casualties have been reported, authorities said.
A rocket strike on a five-storey apartment building in the eastern town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday night killed 15 people and left two dozen people feared trapped in the rubble, Reuters reported.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said the strike was “another terrorist attack” and that Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Moscow denies it targets civilians, but Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left in ruins after Russian shelling, with basements and bomb shelters the only safe place for those who remain, Reuters reported.
On Sunday, rescuers in Chasiv Yar used a crane to lift a concrete slab and their hands to dig for survivors.