Russian missiles hit industrial facilities at a strategic city in southern Ukraine on Sunday as a funeral was held for a four-year-old girl killed in an earlier deadly strike elsewhere in the country.
Liza, who had Down syndrome, was en route to see a speech therapist with her mother when a Russian missile struck the city of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine on Thursday. At least 24 people were killed, including Liza and two boys aged 7 and 8. More than 200 others were wounded, including Liza’s mother.
“I didn’t know Liza, but no person can go through this with calm,” priest Vitalii Holoskevych said. ‘We know that evil cannot win,’ he said, his voice trembling.
On Sunday, more Russian missiles struck industrial facilities in the strategic southern city of Mykolaiv, a key shipbuilding centre in the estuary of the Southern Bug river.
Blocking Black Sea coast
The Russian military has declared a goal to cut off Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border.
If successful, such an effort would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and trade and allow Moscow to secure a land bridge to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, which hosts a Russian military base.
The Russians also sought to reinforce their positions in the Kherson region near Crimea and part of the northern Zaporizhzhia region that they seized in the early stage of the conflict, fearing a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The British Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Russia is moving manpower and equipment between Kherson, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia. It added: “Given the pressures on Russian manpower, the reinforcement of the south whilst the fight for the Donbas continues indicates the seriousness with which Russian commanders view the threat.” For now, the Russian military has focused its efforts on trying to take control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas, where the most capable and well-equipped Ukrainian forces are located.
Ukraine says its forces still retain control of two villages in the Luhansk region.
