Russian air strikes killed 35 people at a military base outside Ukraine’s western megacity of Lviv, original officers said on Sunday, in an attack that brings the conflict dangerously close to the Polish border.
Another nine people were also killed in a strike on the southern megacity of Mykolaiv, the indigenous governor said, while the capital Kyiv braced for possible sequestration by Russian forces.
In a videotape address posted on social media late Saturday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky was adamant that the Russians would not take Ukraine.
“ The Russian raiders can not conquer us. They don’t have similar strength.
They don’t have similar spirit. They’re holding only on violence. Only on terror,” he said.
For the first two weeks following its February 24 irruption, Russia’s forces had concentrated on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine, specially the strategic and heavily besieged harborage of Mariupol.
In recent days they moved to the centre, striking the megacity of Dnipro, and now the west, edging close to the frontier with EU and Nato member Poland.
Overnight, dumdums struck a military training ground in Yavoriv near Lviv, about 20 kilometres (12 country miles) from the Polish border, indigenous governor Maxim Kozitsky said.
He said 35 people were killed and 134 injured in the attack on the base, which was a training centre for Ukrainian forces with foreign preceptors, including from the United States and Canada.
In the Black Sea megacity of Mykolaiv, near the strategic harborage of Odessa, indigenous governor Vitaliy Kim said nine people were killed in a Russian air strike.
The megacity of around has been under attack by Russian colors for days and an AFP journalist said a cancer treatment sanitarium and an eye clinic there came under fire Saturday.
Meanwhile, sweats continue to get help to the strategic southern harborage megacity of Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a philanthropic catastrophe.
A convoy of aid headed for Mariupol was blocked at a Russian checkpoint, but hoped to arrive on Sunday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
Ukraine says further than civilians have failed in a near two-week siege, which has left the megacity without water or heat, and running out of food.
Attempts to void hundreds of thousands of people have constantly failed.
“ Mariupol is still girdled. Since they can not bring down the Ukrainian army, they target the population,” a French military source said.
A top Russian officer described the situation in stark language.
“ Unfortunately, the philanthropic situation in Ukraine is continuing to deteriorate fleetly, and in some metropolises, it has reached disastrous proportions,” said the head of the Russian National Defence Control Centre, Mikhail Mizintsev.
