LAST UPDATE | 13 Jun 2023

RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES on the hometown of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have killed 11 people, as Moscow said it had captured Western armoured vehicles from Kyiv’s forces.

The strikes overnight hit multiple sites and smashed into a five-storey apartment building in the central city of Kryvyi Rig, leaving smoke billowing from the housing block strewn with debris.

“During this terrible night, the enemy killed 11 civilians in the city,” said Sergiy Lysak, the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor.

Officials earlier put the death toll at 10, but Lysak said that another person had been pulled dead from under the rubble.

“The search and rescue operation has been completed,” he added.

Zelenskyy said after the strikes that Russian forces were waging a war against “residential buildings, ordinary cities and people”.

And he promised Ukrainians that those responsible would be held to account.

“Terrorists will never be forgiven, and they will be held accountable for every missile they launch,” he said in a statement on social media.

Air raid sirens had earlier sounded across Ukraine as the capital Kyiv and the northeast city of Kharkiv also came under missile and drone attacks.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 14 cruise missiles and four Iranian-made drones overnight, with 10 missiles and one drone intercepted.

In the morning, another missile was fired by Russian forces before being shot down by the Ukrainian air defences.

‘Trophies’

The fresh wave of attacks came shortly before Moscow claimed to have captured several German Leopard tanks and US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

The defence ministry released footage showing Russian troops surveying the equipment supplied to Ukraine by Western countries.

“Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. These are our trophies. Equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces in the Zaporizhzhia region,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

“Servicemen of the Vostok group inspect enemy tanks and infantry fighting vehicles captured in battle.”

Kyiv has appealed to its allies in the West to deliver a broad range of modern military equipment to help Ukrainian forces recapture large swathes of territory controlled by Russia.

The defence ministry said several of the captured vehicles had working engines, suggesting that battles they were involved in had been short and that Ukrainian troops had “fled” their offensive positions.

Germany’s defence minister said that Berlin would not be able to immediately replace tanks that it had provided to Ukraine.

“Unfortunately it is the nature of war that weapons are destroyed, that tanks are destroyed and people are killed,” Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told broadcaster RTL in an interview aired late Monday.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has asked Australia about the condition of dozens of retired F-18 fighter jets, the country’s ambassador told AFP today, eyeing a potential weapons transfer that could significantly bolster Kyiv’s airpower.

Flooding toll rises

The strikes across Ukraine came shortly after Kyiv claimed to have retaken seven villages and made advances in its counter-offensive against Russian forces.

Military spokesman Andriy Kovalyov said the area of the recaptured land in the eastern and southern regions amounted to “more than 100 square kilometres” (40 square miles).

The commander of Ukrainian ground forces, Colonel Oleksandr Syrskyi, said troops were continuing “the defence operation in the Bakhmut sector”, scene of the longest battle of the war.

“Our soldiers are advancing, and the enemy is losing ground on the flanks,” he said.

Yesterday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was making small gains in a “tough” counter-offensive.

Kyiv’s ambitions to capture more territory further south have been complicated after the destruction of a dam in southern Ukraine last week.

The breach of the Kakhovka dam inundated huge swathes of land under Russian and Ukrainian control, forced thousands to flee and sparked fears of an environmental disaster.

The toll in Russian-controlled territory from the Kakhovka dam breach – which Kyiv and its allies believe was an act of Russian sabotage – has since risen to 17, Moscow-installed officials announced today.

“As of this morning, 12 dead were confirmed in Gola Prystan and five in Oleshky,” Andrei Alekseyenko, head of the Russian-installed government in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, said on social media.