In the rising spate of air raids and bombings, Ukrainian officials have warned their citizens to obey the air raid sirens and make their way to bomb shelters on Monday amid fears that the attacks from Russia would continue.
This trepidation intensified as Moscow marked the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin who had presided over a display of Russia’s vast firepower in Moscow had told his troops they were fighting for Russia’s security now.
Russia’s intervention in Ukraine was needed because the West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea”, Putin said, referring to the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and giving no evidence for his assertion.
The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, said: “Today we do not know what to expect from the enemy, what terrible thing they might do, so please go out onto the street as little as possible, stay in the shelters.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier confirmed the deaths of dozens of people in the Russian bombing of a school in Bilohorivka, eastern Ukraine on Saturday.
“As a result of a Russian strike on Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, about 60 people were killed, civilians, who simply hid at the school, sheltering from shelling,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
About 90 people had taken refuge at the bomb shelters in the school, Gaidai had said.
Africa Today News, New York
