Shelling 'aimed at residential districts'

KYIV • Ukraine's military warned the public yesterday of more indiscriminate Russian shelling from bogged-down Russian troops.

Russian forces were expected to continue to attack critical infrastructure with "high-precision weapons and indiscriminate munitions", Ukraine's armed forces said in a statement.

Amid the devastation caused by Russia's unceasing bombardment of Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted the death of a 96-year-old survivor of Nazi concentration camps, killed in his flat by shelling in Kharkiv.

Nearly four weeks into their invasion, Russian troops have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city and have been halted on nearly all fronts, but are hammering residential districts with artillery, missiles and air strikes.

Boryspil mayor Volodymyr Borysenko yesterday advised civilians to leave the city if they can because of fighting in the Kyiv region where Boryspil is located.

Ukraine's leaders yesterday accused Russian forces of firing on unarmed protesters in the occupied southern city of Kherson, with videos showing residents fleeing flash-bang grenades and sustained gunfire.

"Occupiers shot at people who went out peacefully, without weapons, to protest. For freedom - our freedom," Mr Zelensky said.

A series of videos posted on social media and the messaging app Telegram showed citizens wrapped in Ukraine's blue-and-yellow flag chanting "Go home" and "Glory to Ukraine" in Kherson's "Freedom Square" before stun grenades forced them to flee. Russian soldiers can be seen firing multiple volleys of gunfire into the air. Video footage also showed a group of people treating a stunned and bleeding elderly man, before carrying him away.

Local official Yuriy Sobolevsky said the elderly man's leg was "badly injured" and he had "lost a lot of blood". But he added that medics were treating the wounded and "their lives are not in danger".

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted a video of the incident on Twitter, saying: "In Kherson, Russian war criminals opened fire at unarmed people who peacefully protested against invaders. This is the ugly face of Russia, a disgrace to humankind. We must stop Russia! Sanction them, isolate them, hold war criminals to account."

Kherson, a city of almost 300,000 before the war, was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces, within the first week of the invasion.

People in Kherson have held regular demonstrations against Russian control of the city, a direct challenge to Russia's claim to have liberated the city.

Despite heavy bombardment by Russia, Ukraine has begun to shift the battlefield momentum in some areas to reclaim ground from invading forces, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.

Ukraine's resistance - backed by millions in Western military aid - has been unexpectedly fierce, and now the Ukrainians are "in places and at times going on an offensive", Mr John Kirby told CNN.

"They are going after Russians and pushing them out of places where the Russians have been in the past, particularly in Mykolaiv, in the south," he said.

Echoing Western analysts, he said the invading forces have become bogged down.

"They are running out of fuel. They're running out of food. They are not integrating their operations in a joint manner the way you would think a modern military would," Mr Kirby said.

He said Russia had failed to take control of population centres beyond two areas around Kherson and Melitopol in the south.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE