Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to retake the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces early in the war. Russia attacked the Kiev region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official of Ukraine’s General Staff. He said the attack destroyed one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Butsa. Fifteen people were injured in the Russian strikes, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional governor Oleksii Kuleba said. Kuleba linked the attacks to Statehood Day, a celebration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy established last year and Ukraine marked the occasion on Thursday. “Russia, with the help of missiles, is taking revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba said on Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.” Chernihiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that the Russians also fired missiles from Belarusian territory at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv area had not been targeted for weeks. Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either. The renewed attacks come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, urged Russian forces to “liberate the Russian cities founded by the Russian people – Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia , Lutsk. .” Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also received a barrage of shelling overnight, according to the mayor. Authorities said a police officer was killed in a Russian bombing of a power plant in the Kharkiv region. Shots were also fired in the southern city of Mykolayiv, with one person injured. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military continued its counterattack in the Kherson region, overturning a key bridge over the Dnieper River on Wednesday. Ukrainian media cited an adviser to the Ukrainian president, Oleksii Arestovych, as saying that the operation to liberate Kherson is ongoing, with Kiev forces planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options: “retreat, if possible, surrender or perish’. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the Russians were massing maximum forces in the direction of Kherson, warning: “A very large-scale movement of their troops has begun.” The British military said Ukraine used new long-range artillery supplied by the West to destroy at least three of the Dnieper bridges that Russia relies on to supply its forces. Ukraine’s presidential office announced on Thursday morning that Russian shelling of towns and villages over the past 24 hours had killed at least five civilians, all in eastern Donetsk province, and wounded nine. Fighting in recent weeks has been concentrated in Donetsk province. It has intensified in recent days as Russian forces appeared to be emerging from a reported “operational pause” after seizing neighboring Luhansk province. Ukrainian emergency authorities said two civilians were killed in Russian shelling in the town of Toretsk. A rocket hit a residential building there early Thursday morning, destroying two floors, officials said. “Rocket terror again. We will not give up. … We will not be intimidated,” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said on Telegram. Military analysts believe that Russian forces are focusing their efforts on capturing the towns of Bakhmut and Shiversk in Donetsk province. Zelensky established Statehood Day to remind Ukrainians of the country’s history as an independent state. The celebration honors Prince Vladimir, who made Christianity the official religion of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus more than 1,000 years ago. “You could say that for us, every day is a State Day,” the president said in a State Day speech. “We fight every day so that everyone on the planet finally understands: We are not a colony or an enclave or a protectorate, we are not a province, fiefdom or crown land, we are not part of foreign empires, not part of a country. , not a federal republic, not an autonomy, not a province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state,” Zelensky said. The Kremlin also claims the legacy of Kievan Rus. In 2016, Putin erected a monument to Prince Vladimir near the Kremlin.
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