Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk resulted in the deaths of at least 28 people at a bakery, with Moscow-installed officials confirming that at least one child was among the victims. Saturday, local leader Leonid Pasechnik wrote in a statement on Telegram that emergency services were able to rescue 10 people from under the rubble but Ukrainian officials from Kyiv did not provide any comment on the incident.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have increasingly used longer-range attacks this winter with relatively unchanged positions on the 1,500-kilometer front line in the nearly 2-year-old war. The statement from Ukraine’s General Staff on Sunday reported that they had been under intense Russian attack in the past 24 hours, with continuous assaults all along the front line.
Fighting has been most severe in the eastern city of Avdiivka, with Moscow aiming to encircle Kyiv’s troops but Ukrainian forces finding themselves on the defensive in Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, and Zaporizhzhia. Additionally, there were also reports of one civilian being killed and two others injured in a Russian artillery strike in the frontline town of Toretsk.
The military administration for the Sumy region, to the northern part of Ukraine, said on Sunday that Russian forces had shelled the region in 16 separate attacks the previous day. They fired on the border communities of Yunakivka, Bilopillia, Krasnopillia, Velyka Pysarivka, and Esman. General Serhii Naiev, commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces, also reported that Kyiv’s troops successfully pushed back Russian sabotage and reconnaissance units attempting to cross the border in the Sumy region.
There is a suggestion that Moscow could be probing vulnerabilities on a new front, as Ukrainian soldiers are concentrated in the eastern regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv, further stretching Ukrainian resources.