Russian rockets hit the eastern Ukraine town of Chasiv Yar, destroying a five-story apartment building and killing at least six people, the region's governor said Sunday.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, said about three dozen people could be trapped in the rubble. Rescuers have made contact with two people who are under the wreckage, he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Kyrylenko said the town of about 12,000 was hit by Uragan rockets, which are fired from truck-borne systems. Chasiv Yar is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Kramatorsk, a city that is expected to be a major target of Russian forces as they grind westward.
The Donetsk region is one of two provinces along with Luhansk that make up the Donbas region, where separatist rebels have fought Ukrainian forces since 2014. Last week, Russia captured the city of Lysychansk, the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk.
Russian forces are raising "true hell" in the Donbas, despite assessments they were taking an operational pause, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said Saturday.
After the seizure of Lysychansk, some analysts predicted Moscow's troops likely would take some time to rearm and regroup.
But "so far there has been no operational pause announced by the enemy. He is still attacking and shelling our lands with the same intensity as before," Haidai said. He later said the Russian bombardment of Luhansk was suspended because Ukrainian forces had destroyed ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians.
Although Russia's main attacks appeared to focus on Luhansk and Donetsk, officials said defenders battled to contain Russian forces along several fronts on Saturday.
A missile strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded three civilians, its governor said.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement that the Russian army had targeted civilians on purpose.
"It fired precisely at the residential sector – absolutely deliberately, purposefully, at ordinary houses and civilian objects," he said.
Zelenskyy also dismissed several of Kyiv's senior envoys abroad, saying it was part of "normal diplomatic practice." He said he would appoint new ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Hungary.
He also urged his diplomats to drum up international support and high-end weapons to slow Russia's advance.
US President Joe Biden signed a weapons package for Ukraine on Friday worth up to $400 million, including four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems.
But Ukraine suffered a diplomatic setback on Saturday when Canada said it would return a repaired turbine that Russia's state-controlled Gazprom used to supply natural gas to Germany. Ukraine had argued that a return would violate sanctions on Russia.
On Saturday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging the international community to join forces to condemn Russian aggression, told journalists he had raised concerns with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi over Beijing's alignment with Moscow.
The pair held over five hours of talks on the sidelines of the G20 gathering of foreign ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali. On Friday, Russia's Sergei Lavrov had walked out of a meeting there, denouncing the West for "frenzied criticism".
The Chinese foreign ministry said, without giving details, that Wang and Blinken had discussed "the Ukraine issue".
It also quoted Wang as saying that Sino-American relations were in danger of being further led "astray", with many people believing that "the United States is suffering from an increasingly serious bout of 'Chinaphobia'."
Shortly before the Russian invasion, Beijing and Moscow announced a "no limits" partnership, although US officials have said they have not seen China evade US-led sanctions on Russia or provide it with military equipment.
Kharkiv's Governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram that, as well as the missile strike, fighters had repulsed two Russian attacks near Dementiivka, a town situated between the city and the border with Russia.
Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces hit two "bases of foreign mercenaries deployed near Kharkiv".
Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov also said troops had destroyed ammunition depots in the Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk regions.
Russian-backed forces in the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said three people died and 17 were wounded there in the past 24 hours as Ukrainian forces shelled 10 locations.
Alexei Kulemzin, mayor of Donetsk, wrote on Telegram that two women had died as a result of shelling in the city's Kirovskyi district.
Following Friday's testy G20 exchanges, President Vladimir Putin also signaled that the Kremlin was in no mood for compromise, saying sanctions against Russia risked causing "catastrophic" energy price rises.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Saturday that sanctions were working, and echoed calls for more deliveries of high-precision Western weapons.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
"Russians desperately try to lift those sanctions which proves that they do hurt them. Therefore, sanctions must be stepped up until Putin drops his aggressive plans," Kuleba told a forum in Dubrovnik by videolink.
Since Russia, which has also seized a big chunk of territory across Ukraine's south, started what it calls a "special operation" to demilitarize Ukraine, cities have been bombed to rubble, thousands have been killed, and millions displaced.
British military intelligence said on Saturday Russia was moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations.
A large proportion of the new Russian infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armored vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport, Britain's Defense Ministry tweeted in a regular bulletin.
