Kyiv, UKRAINE (AP) – At least 10 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 20 injured in a new barrage of Russian artillery fire in a single day, the Ukrainian president’s office said on Friday.
Local officials said towns and villages in the east and south within range of Russian artillery were the most affected. Six people died in the Donetsk region, two in the Kherson region and two in the Kharkov region. A day earlier, rockets and self-propelled reconnaissance drones fired by the Russian military penetrated deep into Ukrainian territory, killing at least 11 people.
The bombing follows US and German announcements to send powerful tanks to help Ukraine defend itself. Other Western countries also said they would share modern tanks from their stockpiles.
Moscow is outraged by the move, accusing the West of entering a new level of confrontation with Russia.
Serkhayday, governor of the neighboring Luhansk region, said Ukrainian artillery shelling hit his two Russian military bases in the occupied cities of Kreminna and Rubishne, killing and wounding “dozens” of Russian soldiers. said. His claims could not be independently verified.
Further south, Russian forces resumed shelling of the town of Nikopol across the Dnieper from Russia’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, damaging homes, gas pipes, power lines and bakeries, officials said. Separately, Russian officials on Friday took another step in a month-long and widely criticized effort to graft four Ukrainian provinces onto Russia’s already vast territory. They said the illegally annexed provinces would switch from the time zone covering Kyiv to that of Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of the highly orchestrated illegal annexation came despite widespread international condemnation and the fact that Russia did not fully control the annexed territories. . Russia claims to control almost all of Luhansk and about half of Donetsk.
The planned western deployment of modern tanks to Ukraine was on the minds of many on Friday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told Canada’s CTV that his country was ready to send 60 modern tanks — half of them the PT-91 model, which was built in Poland from 1994 to 2001 as a modernized version of the Soviet-era T-72M1.
The German government insisted Friday that it does not see itself in direct conflict with Russia, after Moscow seized on comments by Germany’s top diplomat this week that suggested otherwise.
n a debate with parliamentarians at the Council of Europe parliamentary session on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Annelena Beerbock said it was important for European countries to avoid a “blame game” when it came to discussing their support for Ukraine. rice field.Ukraine leads Russia and is not at odds with each other. ”
When asked about these statements, German government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann, referring to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s remarks, told reporters in Berlin on Friday: “We support Ukraine, but we are not a party to the conflict,” she added.
Russian state-run media say the state communications watchdog has restricted access to the CIA and FBI websites for allegedly spreading materials “containing inaccurate socially significant information” and “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces.
The Russian government has made it illegal to discredit the military or to spread “false information” about it.
