Eight civilians were killed Sunday in bombings in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, including four in the town of Lyman alone, close to the front and under the direct threat of the Russian advance, the regional governors announced.
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“Russian shelling in the Donetsk region: four civilians killed, all from Lyman,” Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram, adding that seven civilians were injured in this city from where the Ukrainian army recently had to fold.
He added that one civilian died of wounds in Bakhmout, a town further from the front, and four injured in various locations in eastern Ukraine.
Oleg Sinegoubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region (northeast), for his part announced on Telegram that three civilians were dead and eight injured on Sunday in strikes that hit residential areas of Kharkiv and towns in his region.
Lyman, a town of 20,000 before the war, has been largely evacuated in recent days due to the advancing Russian army, which already occupies its surroundings according to local authorities.
The Ukrainian army has also withdrawn from the city, its troops invisible or in concealed outlying positions, according to AFP journalists who visited it recently.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently acknowledged that the situation was “difficult” in the Donbass, a mining basin in eastern Ukraine that has become the priority objective of Russian troops, who invaded Ukraine on February 24.