Five killed by Russian strike as Moscow continues latest push in Ukraine’s east

Five people were killed by Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday as Moscow’s troops continue their push on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The attack hit a high-rise building and a private home, said regional governor Vadym Filaskhin, who said the victims were men aged between 24 and 38.

He urged the last remaining residents to leave the frontline town, which had a pre-war population of 12,000.

“Normal life has been impossible in Chasiv Yar for more than two years,” Mr Filaskhin wrote on social media. “Do not become a Russian target – evacuate.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s ministry of defence said that it had captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions.

Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defence in the area.

At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion on to Russian soil since the Second World War. The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.

Elsewhere, the number of injured after a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday continued to rise.

Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city, said regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.

On social media Saturday, he said that the number of injured had risen from 47 to 96.

He also confirmed that the 12-storey apartment block that was hit by one bomb strike, setting the building ablaze and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, would be partly demolished.

The number of injured also continued to rise in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where five people were killed on Friday by Ukrainian shelling, said governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

He said on Sunday that 46 people had been injured, of whom 37 were in hospital, including seven children.