Russian artillery strikes yesterday pounded Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, after Moscow announced it was expanding its war aims, even as Russian gas flows to Europe resumed through the Nord Stream pipeline.
The attacks on the eastern city — scarred by weeks of Russian shelling — came after 10 days of scheduled work ended on the Nord Stream gas pipeline that had spurred fears of a permanent cutoff.
Kharkiv’s regional governor said two people were killed and 19 injured, four of whom were in a serious condition.
Photo: AFP
Three people were killed by strikes a day earlier in Kharkiv, where some semblance of normal life had returned in the past few weeks after Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian troops from the city limits.
“We are asking Kharkiv residents to be extremely careful. The enemy is firing chaotically and brutally at the city. Stay in shelters!” Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Synyehubov wrote on social media.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said there was also some damage on a mosque in Kharkiv, accusing Russia of “contempt” after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran this week.
In Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting, a school that Ukrainian officials said was being used as a food aid storage point was also struck.
“I have been working at this school for 16 years. It was my home,” the school’s deputy director Olena Shmadchenko, 56, said.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and the war has left thousands dead, forced millions to flee their homes and wrought havoc with the economy.
Ukraine’s central bank yesterday said it was devaluing the hryvnia by 25 percent.
“The new hryvnia rate will become an anchor for the economy and will add its resilience in conditions of uncertainty,” the bank said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the resumption of gas supplies from Russia to Europe through Germany came a day after Europe unveiled emergency measures to circumvent Russian energy “blackmail.”
In its latest package of penalties on Wednesday, the EU targeted gold exports and froze assets at Russia’s largest bank Sberbank.
The German government had been worried Moscow would not reopen the taps on the Nord Stream pipeline after Russia in the past few months severely curbed flows in retaliation against sanctions.
“It’s working,” a Nord Stream spokesman said yesterday, without specifying the amount of gas being delivered.
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