Renewed Russian Federation (RF) artillery and air strikes against civilian homes and businesses left four dead and ten injured in the north-eastern city Kharkiv, and damaged dozens of civilian structures elsewhere, official statements and news reports said on Thursday, April 14. A probable artillery rocket strike on Kharkiv’s northern Saltivka residential district blasted buildings and pummeled the city’s popular (peace time) Gorky Park. Images from the scene showed munitions knocking down structures, blasting gardens and greenways, and digging craters in pedestrian walkways.
No Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) military units or facilities were anywhere near the strikes, and to all appearances the RF attack was aimed at civilian targets in an attempt to browbeat Kharkiv residents into surrender, said Oleh Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional defense command, in a public statement. He added: “Today, the occupiers continued their bombardment of residential regions of Kharkiv, where there’s no military infrastructure whatsoever. This was a cruel and intentional attack against a peaceful civilian population.”
Ukraine’s southern forces command on Thursday reported overnight RF artillery strikes on villages in the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv Regions. Ukraine’s joint forces command, responsible for operations in the eastern Donbas sector, reported RF bombardments hit civilian structures near the towns of Popasna and Lysychansk.
No casualties were reported. The Security Service of Ukraine on Thursday published a recording of an alleged intercepted phone conversation between an RF army service member deployed to Donbas and his wife, in which he discussed his upcoming missions and tasks. According to this unconfirmed intercept, RF commanders in Ukraine’s east have direct orders from the Kremlin to level Lysychansk and the city of Severodonetsk. Both places have been very heavily shelled and hit by air strikes since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine of Feb. 24, in part because of a tenacious month-long Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) defense of positions near both places.
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, in a Wednesday night television interview accused Moscow of targeting Ukrainian civilians intentionally. “The Kremlin has already demonstrated that it can only fight against unarmed civilians. For all these crimes Russia will be held responsible in international (war crimes) tribunals in the future,” Yermak said.
Kremlin spokesmen and RF state-controlled TV have claimed Russian forces are only attacking UAF military targets.
International media, independent Ukrainian media, official state Ukrainian media, eyewitness accounts and KP direct observation have all confirmed RF forces have in fact attacked Ukrainian homes, businesses and civilian infrastructure not only incessantly, but as their primary strategic targets.
