Kyiv strikes Russian-held south with rocket attacks

KYIV • Ukraine launched long-range rocket attacks on Russian forces in southern Ukraine and destroyed an ammunition store, its military said, as Russia continued to pound the country's east.

The strike on Nova Kakhovk in the Kherson region killed 52 people, Ukraine's military said on Tuesday.

It comes as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba yesterday ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any peace deal.

"The objective of Ukraine in this war... is to liberate our territories, restore our territorial integrity and full sovereignty in the east and south of Ukraine," he said. "This is the end point of our negotiating position."

The town's Russia-installed authorities said Ukraine used American-supplied Himars mobile artillery systems in the Nova Kakhovk attack.

"Based on the results of our rocket and artillery units, the enemy lost 52 (people), an Msta-B howitzer, a mortar and seven armoured and other vehicles, as well as an ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovk," Ukraine's southern military command said in a statement.

Pro-Russian officials said the strike killed civilians.

The area is of strategic importance because of its Black Sea access, once-thriving agricultural industry and location just north of Russian-annexed Crimea.

Unverified videos posted on social media show an immense fireball erupting into the night sky. Images released by Russian state media show a wasteland covered in rubble and the remains of buildings.

An official from the Russian-backed local administration said that Ukraine destroyed warehouses containing saltpetre, a chemical compound which can be used to make fertiliser or gunpowder.

Russia continued to pound eastern Ukraine in an effort to gain control of Donetsk province and the entire industrial Donbas region.

At least five people were killed yesterday in Russian shellings in the region surrounding the embattled Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv near the Black Sea.

Ukraine's presidential deputy chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko said a barrage of 28 rocket strikes damaged a hospital and homes in several parts of Mykolaiv.

Russia's Defence Ministry said in a briefing it had targeted Mykolaiv with "high-precision surface-to-air missiles", claiming to have killed dozens of soldiers east of the city.

A coastal city with an estimated pre-war population of around 475,000 residents, Mykolaiv lies between Ukraine's largest port of Odesa and Kherson, a city seized by Russian troops early into the February invasion.

Russia earlier this month captured Luhansk province, which makes up the rest of the Donbas.

Moscow says it wants to wrest the Donbas from Ukraine on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in two self-proclaimed people's republics whose independence it recognised on the eve of the war.

Ukraine is bracing itself for what it expects will be a massive new Russian offensive in the east.

Regional Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said there was a significant build-up of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Siversky areas, and around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The entire front line in the region was under constant shelling as Russian troops tried to break through but they were being repelled, he said.

Further east in Donbas, Ukrainian forces launched a "massive air strike" on an air defence unit in Luhansk, pro-Russian militia officer Andrey Marochko said in his Telegram channel, according to Tass news agency.

Russia's campaign in Ukraine, which it calls a "special military operation", is nearing five months and is Europe's biggest conflict since World War II.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE