Several shellings were recorded on Tuesday in Kramatorska city in eastern Ukraine that is still under control of kyiv although threatened by a strong offensive by Russian troops. Thousands of people have already fled that territory for fear of being totally trapped. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense of Russia assured that his troops destroyed a training center of Ukrainian special operations forces which was also allegedly used to house foreign mercenaries in the south of the country.
The shotsprobably long-range missiles or rockets, they would have destroyed a school in the center of the town of Kramatorsk, neighboring a building that is the police headquarters. A smoking crater more than ten meters in diameter was visible in the schoolyard, practically in ruins. The inhabitants of the place affirmed that there had been no victims since the school was empty and there is no official balance at the moment.
Since Russia withdrew its troops from the kyiv and north-central regions of the country and announced that “it was concentrating its efforts on the liberation of Donbass”, in eastern Ukraine, this area lives with the anguish of a major Russian offensive. The Ukrainian armed forces have been deployed since 2014 in a front line that borders Donetsk and Lugansk, capitals of the two pro-Russian separatist provinces of the same name, and reaches Izum, in the northwest, recently conquered by Ukraine.
On the other hand, in his usual daily report, the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, announced that Russian aviation destroyed 134 military installations of Ukrainian troops during the early hours of Tuesday. Konashenkov reported that among the targets a training center of the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine was destroyedwhich was used for the deployment of “foreign mercenaries” in the city of Mykolayiv.
Russia also reported that it shot down helicopters that were going to remove Ukrainian military chiefs from the city of Mariupol, the most affected in the eastern region since the beginning of the invasion and where, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a team that had been detained by the police on Monday “was released overnight.” The Russian Army announced the final offensive to take the port city after the deadline for the Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms and leave the city in the direction of the territory controlled by kyiv.
Mariupol, a city where some 100,000 people still remain according to various estimates, has been under siege by Russian troops and separatist militias for several weeks. According to the mayor’s office, in the siege of the city, condemned for its brutality by the international community, some five thousand people could have died.