Russia widens its radius of action and bombs western Ukraine, hitherto relatively spared.
A military base near the Polish border was hit by more than 30 missiles overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
According to a report established by the governor of the region, the strikes left 35 dead and 134 injured.
This camp, located in Yavoriv, about forty kilometers west of Lviv, has served in recent years as a training ground for Ukrainian forces supervised by foreign instructors, notably American and Canadian.
The Pentagon said the US military had left the site for several weeks.
But Yavoriv also being used recently to train the "International Legion", foreign volunteers who came to fight in Ukraine, Western losses are not completely excluded.
the airstrikes were carried out from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov”
.
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This bombardment is added to those having touched Friday and Saturday the military airport of Lutsk, killing four Ukrainian soldiers, then Friday and Sunday that of Ivano-Frankivsk.
It comes less than 24 hours after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Western arms supplies to Ukraine are
“legitimate targets”
.
Moscow claimed that the strikes eliminated
"foreign mercenaries and a significant amount of foreign weapons"
.
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On the 18th day of fighting, Moscow continues its offensive on the cities of eastern Ukraine and on Kiev.
If the ground attack on the capital seems to be marking time for the moment, intense bombardments have still affected the outskirts, to the east near Brovary and to the northwest at Irpin.
It is in this city that an American freelance journalist, Brent Renaud, lost his life on Sunday.
The Russian army continued its strategy of encircling and then besieging Kiev, of which only the roads to the south remained clear.
Several other cities are shelled like Sumy, a strategic lock on the road to the capital.
Strikes on a large monastery in the Donetsk region left around thirty injured overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
"War of Seats"
In the south, Mariupol, completely besieged for ten days, hoped for the arrival of humanitarian aid on Sunday.
On Saturday, the relief convoy was blocked for five hours by the Russians, although this help was vital.
The large port is in an
"almost hopeless
" situation, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and attempts to establish humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians are failing.
Elsewhere in the country, some 123,000 people have been able to leave war zones, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The Russian forces have entered into a logic of war that I call siege warfare, like in Kharkiv or Mariupol and that we risk seeing in Kiev.
In this situation, the worst is ahead of us.
, estimated, on France Inter, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The Russian military authorities eventually recognized that the situation
"in certain cities"
had taken on
"catastrophic proportions",
but immediately accused the Ukrainian nationalists of undermining residential areas.
The balance of losses, both civilian and military, is impossible to establish.
On Sunday, Mariupol town hall said 2,187 residents had been killed there.
The UN shows a count of 579 civilians killed, but recognizes that this figure is much lower than the reality.
On the diplomatic front, Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed a
“fundamentally different approach”
from Moscow in his recent talks with Kiev, noting that Russia was no longer content to “
issue ultimatums”
.
The talks should resume
"in the coming days",
according to an adviser to the Ukrainian president.
On Sunday, Pope Francis called for an end to the
“massacre”
in Ukraine.
“Faced with the barbarism which consists in killing children, innocents, defenseless civilians, there is no strategic reason.
The unacceptable armed aggression must simply stop.”
Ukraine: Zelensky evokes a “fundamentally different approach” from Moscow in the talks – Watch on Figaro Live