According to Ukrainian sources, a shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was hit by a Russian missile. More than a thousand people are said to have stayed in the building at the time. Russian attacks are also said to come from Belarus. You can find all the news about the war in Ukraine in the ticker.
Tuesday, June 28, 1:39 a.m .: After the rocket attack on a shopping center in Ukraine, the authorities received more than 40 missing person reports. This was announced by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the number of people killed rose from 13 to 15, according to the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin. According to the prosecutor, 59 people received medical treatment, around half of them are in a serious condition. Ukraine blamed Russia for the attack. The attack was harshly condemned internationally.
The rocket hit the building in the afternoon. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack. These were fired by long-range Tu-22 bombers from the Kursk region of Russia, it said.
10:13 p.m .: According to the authorities, eight people were killed in a queue in front of a tanker truck with drinking water in the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk in a Russian rocket attack. Another 21 were injured, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, wrote to the Telegram news service on Monday. Lysychank is the last major city in the region still under Ukrainian control after the Russian military seized neighboring Seyerodonetsk.
According to Ukrainian regional commander Oleg Sinegubov, Russian shelling killed 5 civilians and wounded 22 others in the city of Kharkiv. Sinegubow wrote on Telegram that five children were among the injured.
8:36 p.m .: After a rocket attack on a shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, at least 13 people died, according to official information. In addition, around 40 people were injured, some seriously, said the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin, on Monday evening. Ukraine blamed Russia for the attack. “The occupiers fired rockets at a shopping center where more than a thousand civilians were staying,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram news service.
In a video that Zelenskyj distributed, among others, the burning building could be seen with thick clouds of dark smoke. In the immediate vicinity of the shopping center there are several industrial plants, including a factory for road construction machinery. According to civil protection, 115 firefighters with 20 fire engines were deployed. According to local authorities, the fire was extinguished in the evening. A largely burned-out building could be seen in a video distributed by Governor Lunin on Telegram.
The rocket hit the building in the afternoon. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack. These were fired by long-range Tu-22 bombers from the Kursk region of Russia, it said. Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said a second missile had hit a local sports stadium.
3:43 p.m .: Russian troops say they killed more than 40 Ukrainian soldiers in attacks on the Mykolaiv region in southeastern Ukraine. Military equipment was also destroyed near the village of Vyssunsk on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced in Moscow on Monday. In addition, a total of 24 command posts were destroyed in several areas. The information cannot be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Moscow also confirmed rocket attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday – but denied hitting a residential building. The attack was aimed at the Artem armaments factory. Moscow said Ukraine had probably used anti-aircraft missiles, one of which fell into a residential building. The Ukrainian side, in turn, blamed Russian missiles and spoke of several injured residents and one dead.
10:28 a.m .: According to Great Britain, the Russian army will primarily rely on reservists in its war against Ukraine. The combat reserve consists of voluntary part-time workers who are actually intended for security tasks in the rear of the front, said the Ministry of Defense in London on Monday, citing intelligence information. Battalions would probably be filled with veterans who have served in the past five years. “Despite an ongoing shortage of operational reservists for Ukraine, the Russian leadership is likely to remain reluctant to order a general mobilization,” it said.
Tactically, the Russian focus is still on the pocket around the neighboring stands of Sivyerodonetsk and Lysychansk. But the British ministry also sees an additional plan: “A week of constant heavy shelling indicates that Russia is now trying to gain momentum on the northern Izyum axis.” make good use of the wooded terrain for defense.
The British Navy has no plans to help bypass the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. “We’re looking at what we can do to help repair railways, we’re looking at a land bridge so we can get wheat across the land border,” Government Member George Eustice told Sky News. “It’s very, very dangerous right now to try to send ships into the Black Sea.” The area is mined and Ukraine itself has closed ports for security reasons, Eustice said.
7.50 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Ukrainian military repulsed Russian attacks west of Lyssychansk and thus prevented the strategically important city in eastern Ukraine from being surrounded. “Near Verkhnyokamyanka, the defense forces inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy and forced them to retreat,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Monday. Verkhnyokamyanka is only a few kilometers west of Lysychansk on the last important supply road for the city.
Lysychansk itself was again the target of heavy air and artillery attacks, according to Ukrainian sources. Russian units are already on the outskirts of the city in the south. Several suburbs have also come under fire. Several thousand Ukrainian soldiers are said to be stationed in the city.
There is also fighting a little further west in the Bachmut area. The city is an important transport hub. According to Ukrainian information, attacks by Russian units on a suburb were also repelled here. Despite fierce artillery combat, there was little movement during the Russian advance on the Slovjansk-Kramatorsk conurbation.
The general staff also reports Russian artillery attacks from the south of the country, in the Cherson region. At the same time, the Luftwaffe had flown “successful strikes” against accumulations of enemy troops there. This information cannot be verified independently.
5.30 a.m .: The new commander of the Bundeswehr Operations Command, Bernd Schütt, sees the greatest danger of a military escalation with Russia on the north-eastern flank of NATO. “And that’s why the point of credible deterrence in this region is a very central point for me. The presence of land forces plays a central role here,” said the lieutenant general of the German Press Agency. There will also be increased exercises for national and alliance defense in his command. Schütt: “We have not yet trained this type of intensive warfare here. Existing structures and procedures need to be adapted.”
The Operations Command in Schwielowsee near Potsdam manages the contingents of the Bundeswehr on foreign missions in national matters – such as material, personnel and disciplinary matters – but not operationally. During operations like in Lithuania – where the Bundeswehr is leading a multinational NATO battle group (eFP) – the German soldiers are also involved in the defense planning of the respective country. After more concrete Russian threats in the dispute over transit traffic to the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, fears in the Baltic States have recently grown.
Monday, June 27, 5:11 a.m.: Six people were injured in a rocket hit in the Odessa region in southern Ukraine. The missile was fired by a Russian Tu-22 strategic bomber, the Ukrainian Defense Command South said on Monday. According to the authorities, a child is among the victims. It is not clear from the information whether the people involved were injured or killed.
“Because of the impact in the residential area of a civilian settlement, several houses and farm buildings were destroyed and set on fire in an area of about 500 square meters,” it said. The fire department is still fighting the fire.
Over the weekend, Ukraine reported a significant increase in Russian missile attacks on the country. A number of regions far behind the front were also hit – from the western Ukrainian region of Lviv to Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr to Chernihiv and Kyiv. In the south of the country, Mykolaiv and Odessa, among others, were hit.
9:44 p.m .: A gas production platform was attacked again in the Black Sea. This was announced by representatives of the Crimean peninsula, which was incorporated by Russia, on Sunday evening, as reported by the Russian state agency TASS. They blamed Ukraine for the attack. That couldn’t be checked. There were no injuries, it said. It was unclear whether a fire broke out.
Three oil rigs in the Black Sea were attacked with rockets on Monday. The originally Ukrainian facilities were occupied in March 2014 as part of the annexation of Crimea. At the end of February this year, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The sea area of the Black Sea is also affected by fighting.
6:56 p.m .: After Russian troops took the city of Sievjerodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, fighting for the city of Lysychansk continued. The enemy, with the support of artillery, is increasingly trying to block the strategically important city from the south, the Ukrainian general staff said on Sunday evening. Civil and military infrastructure were also hit. This could not be independently verified.
Russia invaded Ukraine four months ago and has since conquered large parts of the east and south of the country. In the Luhansk region, Ukrainian troops now only control the city of Lysychansk. There, too, Russian soldiers have advanced to the outskirts of the city. The Russian Defense Ministry announced the capture of Sievjerodonetsk on Saturday. Ukraine also conceded the loss.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.