Russian authorities say 20 people have been killed in Ukrainian bombings in occupied eastern Ukraine

Lysichansk, in the Luhansk region, fell to Russian forces in the summer of 2022. Moscow says the city suffered a Ukrainian bombardment this Saturday.

A Ukrainian bomb blast that hit a bakery in the occupied city of Lysichansk, in the east of the country, killed at least 20 people, Russian authorities said, who said they feared more victims.

Lysichansk, in the Luhansk region, fell to Russian forces in the summer of 2022 after a violent battle.

Bombing in eastern Ukraine

The front in eastern Ukraine has barely advanced in months but the fighting has been bloody and bombings on both sides have intensified this winter.

“In Lysichensk, employees of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry found the bodies of 20 people under the rubble,” the ministry wrote on Telegram messaging.

The same source released a video of rescuers working in the dark, pulling a body from the rubble before discovering an injured woman carried away on a stretcher.

Searches “all night”.

The ministry said earlier it planned to continue the search “throughout the night” and that rescuers had so far “rescued 10 people” from the rubble. Leonid Pesechnik, the Russian-installed governor of Lugansk, accused Kiev forces of targeting a busy bakery that he said was known for fresh bread on weekends.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti has published a video of the destroyed building, where we see rescuers pulling a completely crushed car out of the rubble. The one-story building had a large sign with the name “Adriatic Restaurant” and was completely destroyed, reduced to rubble.

Lysichansk, located 15 km from Ukrainian-controlled territory, had a population of 111,000 before the Russian invasion began. In the summer of 2022, Russian forces captured it, like its twin city of Severodonetsk, after one of the most brutal battles since the invasion began in February 2022.

Drone attack during Friday to Saturday night

On the Ukrainian side, the air force announced on Saturday that it had shot down nine of the 14 drones launched by Russia in southern and central Ukraine between Friday and Saturday night. “Ukraine destroyed nine enemy drones in the Dnipro, Odessa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr regions,” the Kyiv Air Force said.

Most of the Iranian-made Shahed drones targeted “energy infrastructure” in the central Dnipro region, where thousands of people are without power. The main power outage was in Krivy Rig, home of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The governor of the Dnipro region, Serguii Lysak, said 15,000 residents of Krivi Rig were without electricity after the drone attack. Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has targeted the country’s energy infrastructure, leaving thousands without heat during an intensified campaign last year.

Russian warship destroyed in Crimea

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his troops for striking Moscow’s forces far from the battlefield, “both on land and at sea.” The statement came two days after Kiev announced it had destroyed a Russian warship off the coast of Crimea following a drone attack claimed by Ukraine, and a fire broke out at a major refinery in southwestern Russia’s Volgograd region on Saturday.

“After the downed drone crashed, a fire broke out at the Volgograd refinery,” local governor Andrey Botcharov said on Telegram.

Early in the morning, the emergency services quoted by the TASS agency confirmed that the fire had been extinguished. Ukrainian security services said the fire at the refinery in Volgograd was “the result of a successful drone attack by the SBU”, a Ukrainian security source told AFP.

Owned by giant Lukoil, the refinery claims on its website to be the “largest producer of petroleum products in the Southern Federal District,” which brings together eight regions in southwestern Russia. Since the offensive against Kyiv began in February 2022, Russian territory has been regularly targeted by strikes and drone attacks attributed to Kyiv.