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According to Ukrainian sources, Russian rockets hit this apartment building in Serhiyivka
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Uncredited / dpa
The Kremlin troops are continuing their attacks with undiminished force, especially in eastern Ukraine.
In Luhansk, the attackers report further successes in capturing Lysychansk, but the defenders contradict the reports of success.
Kyiv accuses Moscow of deliberately attacking residential areas "to force Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table." According to the British secret service, Russia is now using inaccurate missiles - albeit for a lack of alternatives.
The developments at a glance.
military situation
According to information from Kyiv, Russia is continuing its attacks on a broad front in eastern Ukraine.
In the Kharkiv area, the Russian army is trying to recapture lost positions with the support of artillery, the Ukrainian general staff said.
Numerous places would be shelled in order to tie down the Ukrainian army there.
A Russian attack was repelled in the Donetsk region, it said.
Russian air raids were reported from the Avdiivka area.
In the Black Sea, on the other hand, Russia continues to block Ukraine's sea connections.
The Russian army, for its part, claims to have hit numerous military targets in airstrikes.
Among other things, two weapons depots near the city of Mykolaiv in the south of the country were destroyed, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said, according to the Tass agency.
In the east, an arms depot in a tractor depot near Kharkiv was hit.
The spokesman said that Ukraine had suffered “high losses of people and material”.
According to the pro-Russian separatists, Ukraine has suffered another setback in Donbass.
Accordingly, Kremlin troops have taken control of the city administration building in the heavily contested city of Lysychansk.
That said the separatist representative Andrei Marochko of the Russian agency Interfax.
Lysychansk is the last city in the Luhansk region not yet under Russian control.
Similar reports about the strategically important city in the Luhansk region were also made by the Russian news agency Ria Novosti and by the President of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
There was initially no official statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The Ukrainian army denies these success stories.
There is fierce fighting around the city, a Ukrainian army spokesman said on television.
Lysychansk was "not surrounded and still under the control of the Ukrainian army."
Lysychansk's neighboring city of Sievjerodonetsk was captured by Russian troops a week ago after weeks of fighting.
Should Russian troops also capture Lysychansk, they could then target Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Donetsk, the second Donbass sub-region.
humanitarian situation
Ukraine has sharply condemned a Russian rocket attack on a residential building in the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa that killed at least 21 and wounded 39.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke of "deliberate, targeted Russian terror".
Neither weapons nor military equipment were hidden in the house - "as Russian propagandists and officials always tell about such attacks," he said in a video message.
The impact of the three rockets was not an accident.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova spoke of a war crime.
"We are taking all investigative measures necessary to identify the specific individuals responsible for this horrific war crime," she said.
Investigators would find fragments of the rockets that hit a residential building in the coastal town of Serhiivka in the rubble.
Measurements would also be taken to determine the trajectory of the projectiles.
Presidential adviser speaks of "inhumane attacks"
The Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak sees a general change in the Russian army's warfare.
"It's a new Russian tactic: attacking neighborhoods and putting pressure on Western political elites to force Ukraine to sit at the negotiating table," Podoliak said.
Moscow pays no attention to how the world reacts to "inhumane attacks" with cruise missiles on residential areas.
But this tactic will not work.
Russia is said to have used banned cluster munitions in rocket attacks on the city of Sloviansk.
During the night of Saturday, civilian areas where there were no military installations were hit, Mayor Wadym Lyakh reported in the online messenger service Telegram.
Four people were killed and seven people were injured.
Cluster munitions are rockets and bombs that burst in mid-air over the target, releasing many small explosive devices.
Their use is outlawed under international law.
That's what the international community says
According to British estimates, Russia is increasingly using inaccurate missiles in its attacks.
The reason is probably that the supplies of modern, accurate weapons are dwindling, said the Ministry of Defense in London.
Analysis of surveillance footage showed that the shopping center in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was very likely hit by a Ch-32 missile, the agency said, citing intelligence.
London has protested the treatment of prisoners of war following reports of the capture of two more Britons in eastern Ukraine.
"We condemn the exploitation of prisoners of war and civilians for political purposes and have raised this with Russia," the Foreign Office said in London.
"We are in constant contact with the Ukrainian government about the cases and we fully support Ukraine in getting them released."
The ruler of the ex-Soviet Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has threatened the West.
If there is an attack on Belarus, his country will react immediately, Lukashenko said in a speech on the country's upcoming Independence Day, according to the state news agency Belta.
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svs/dpa/Reuters