KYIV: Overnight Russian strikes on Ukraine’s Lviv region killed a man, its governor said on Sunday, as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his people to endure during their third Easter at war.
Ukraine is on the back foot as the Russian invasion grinds into its third year, suffering ammunition shortages on the front line and pleading for Western support to fend off relentless aerial attacks.
Russian cruise missiles targeted critical infrastructure in the western Lviv region and “one man died as a result of the attack”, governor Maksym Kozytsky wrote on Telegram.
There “may still be people under the rubble” that rescuers were combing through, he said, adding that firefighters had extinguished a blaze that broke out at an administrative building damaged in the raid.
National energy operator Ukrenergo said Russia also targeted high-voltage facilities in the south, forcing emergency shutdowns in the Black Sea city of Odesa and nearby areas.
“There is no night or day when Russian terror does not try to break our lives,” Zelensky wrote in an Easter Sunday message to Ukrainians on social media, after the air force reported downing nine missiles and nine drones overnight.
Zelensky calls for more Western air defence systems to ‘save lives’
“But we defend ourselves, we endure, our spirit does not give up and knows that it is possible to avert death. Life can prevail,” he said.
Moscow has intensified strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities in recent weeks, saying it is responding to attacks by Kyiv on Russian border regions.
Energy consumption restrictions remained in place in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv and Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rig following earlier Russian attacks, Ukrenergo said on Sunday.
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