– Dad it’s over now. She’s dead. The middle-aged man is crying over his dead wife and will not let go. He takes her by the hair, puts his arm around her shoulder. – Get up, continues the son Olexsander. – Do not you understand? asks the father. – What do I not understand? It’s my mother. Dad, please, Dad, please. Several apartment blocks in Kharkiv suffered enormous damage after attacks this week. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP A common day in the war This dialogue was witnessed this week by the Ukrainian AP photographer and journalist Evgeniy Maloetka. The deceased woman, Natalia Kolesnik, was going out to feed the cats when the Russian attacks started on Thursday. It was afternoon and summer in Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, a common day in the war. Shortly afterwards, the woman and her mother Natalia lay dead on the asphalt outside the block where she lived. Two other people were also outside the apartment blocks, a middle-aged woman in a yellow, knee-length dress and another woman, who has not been identified. Next to the body, was a basket of half-eaten fruit, cherries and apples, covered in blood, writes Evgeniy Maloletka on Instagram. In the bag lying on the bench nearby, a mobile phone rang. The rocket attack on the apartment block led to the death of three people, which is also confirmed by the authorities in the city of Kharkiv. A dead woman is being transported from the scene by health personnel and the military. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP Daily rocket attacks Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city and is located in the northeast of the country, not far from the border with Russia. On Wednesday, a Russian missile hit the University of Kharkiv. On Thursday, at least three people died in the bombings against a residential area. The Russian forces have this week moved further into Ukraine, stepping up their offensive in the Donetsk region, which includes the city of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. After President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the neighboring region of Luhansk on Monday, the Russians have aimed guns south. The two counties make up the Donbas. Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenk asked 350,000 residents to flee earlier this week. On Saturday morning, July 9, a residential building in the center of Kharkiv was hit by a Russian missile. According to the authorities, 6 people have been injured, including a 12-year-old girl. Mined mines in Kharkiv The industrial city of Kharkiv, on the other hand, is further north, and Russian forces withdrew from the area and the capital Kyiv earlier in the war. But they never completely disappeared. In the ground, the Russian soldiers dug down forbidden mines that are meant to hit people, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. Daily rocket attacks are now the biggest threat in the city, a Ukrainian soldier told Reuters. – We have anti-missile defenses, but unfortunately we do not have enough numbers to shoot down all the missiles. Russia has a lot of rockets, says the soldier “Shah”, who did not want his real name in print. On Wednesday night, a Russian missile hit a university in the industrial city. The main building, lecture halls, the university museum and the library were affected, President Volodymyr Zelenskyj announced. A school for 260 visually impaired children was also hit and destroyed. No children or staff were at the school when the rocket hit. The Saltivka neighborhood in Kharkiv was home to half a million people at the start of the year. Now there are only a few dozen left in apartments without water and electricity. It is written on the walls that the Russians had to die. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP – Not seriously The war is now in its fifth month, after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. On Thursday, President Putin made another threat when he warned that Russia has not yet seriously begun its military operations in Ukraine. Putin also challenged Western countries, saying they were “more than welcome” to try to defeat Russia on the battlefield. – We hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say? Just let them try, he said. Putin’s words came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyj said Ukrainian forces were now carrying out “significant attacks” on Russian logistics targets due to Western weapons aid. – Finally, the Western artillery has begun to function fully, the weapons we get from our partners. Their accuracy is exactly what we need, he said in a video speech on Wednesday. Viktor Shevchenko shows the deep crater in the ground after a Russian attack in the Saltivka area of Kharkiv. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP Transport Centers According to the New York Times, the United States has discovered 18 different places in Ukraine that the Russians use as so-called “infiltration centers”. Here the Russian forces transport Ukrainian civilians which they have since forcibly transported to Russia. It is the US diplomat Courtney Austrian who said that the Russian forces have used schools, sports halls and cultural centers for this purpose, which they get help from pro-Russian forces to run. At least 18 filtration sites have been discovered on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border so far, she said during a meeting in Vienna on Thursday. Ukrainian authorities say 1.6 million Ukrainians have been forcibly relocated to Russia since the outbreak of the war. Among them are 250,000 children. But those numbers are difficult to verify, according to diplomat Austrian. There are no public records, she said. A farmer harvests his crop just ten kilometers from the front line with intense fighting in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. The earth has been hit in an attack. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP
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Deadly Russian rocket attacks on the industrial city of Kharkiv – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
