KYIV, Ukraine: Russia pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones, with one strike reported to have killed 25 people, as it moved Friday to fold more seized Ukrainian territory into Russia itself and under the protection of its nuclear umbrella, opening an internationally condemned dangerous new phase of the seven-month war.
But even as it prepared to celebrate the incorporation into Russia of four occupied Ukrainian regions, in defiance of international law and with the prospect of further sanctions, the Kremlin was facing another stinging battlefield loss. Russian and Western analysts reported the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the city of Lyman, that — if retaken — could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into one of the very regions that Russia is annexing.
Salvos of Russian strikes reported in five Ukrainian cities together amounted to the heaviest barrage that Russia has unleashed for weeks. It follows analysts’ warnings that Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to dip more heavily into his dwindling stocks of precision weapons and step up attacks as part of a strategy to escalate the war to an extent that would shatter Western support for Ukraine.
In the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down on people who were waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory in order to bring family members back across the front lines, said the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
The general prosecutor’s office said 25 people were killed and 50 wounded. The Zaporizhzhia region’s Ukrainian governor, Oleksandr Starukh, posted images of burned-out vehicles that had been part of the humanitarian convoy, and of bodies lying in the road.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. The regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said at least one person was killed and five others were wounded by Russian Iskander missiles that slammed into a transportation company, destroying buses, and that also damaged high-rise buildings.
In Mykolaiv, a Russian missile struck a high rise and wounded eight people, said the regional head, Vitaliy Kim.
Around the Black Sea port city of Odesa and the city of Mykolaiv, Russia again launched Iranian-made suicide drones, some of which were shot down by air defenses while others struck targets, the Ukrainian air force’s air defense command said. It said Russia launched the drones from the Black Sea.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out the strike there on the humanitarian convoy, but provided no evidence. Russia did not immediately acknowledge the other strikes.
The attacks come as Moscow prepares Friday to annex four occupied regions, likely including territory that it doesn’t actually control. The Kremlin paved the way for the land-grabs with “referendums,” sometimes at gunpoint, that were universally dismissed as rigged shams by Ukraine and its Western backers. Those regions include areas near Zaporizhzhia, but not the city itself, which remains in Ukrainian hands.