Russian shelling targets heart of city of Kherson

Kyiv, December 18

Russian military forces on Sunday shelled the centre of Kherson, the major city that Russian soldiers retreated from last month in one of Moscow’s biggest battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.

Three people were wounded in the attacks, said presidential deputy chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

The southern city and its surrounding region have come under frequent attack since the Russian pullback.

Regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said on Sunday that Russia had carried out 54 attacks with rocket, mortar and tank fire over the previous day, killing three people and wounding six.

Meanwhile, in Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Sunday that one person was killed and eight wounded in Ukrainian shelling of the region, which lies along Ukraine’s northern border.

In the latest phase of the war that Russia began nearly 10 months ago, Moscow’s forces have been heavily targeting infrastructure serving civilians, such as water and electricity supply lines, compounding Ukrainians’ suffering as winter sets in.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the final of the soccer World Cup to decry war.

“This World Cup proved time and again that different countries and different nationalities can decide who is the strongest in fair play but not in the playing with fire — on the green playing field, not on the red battlefield,” Zelenskyy said in an English video statement released hours before the final in Qatar between Argentina and France. AP