Russia set up a military base in Melitopol and launched a new offensive to take over the main cities of Ukraine

The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, denounced that Russian troops have set up a military base near the city's airfield, from where they launch missiles into other regions of Ukraine.

“These missiles will be destroyed, so the civilians of Melitopol are a living shield of the Russian Army. Every day, Russian occupiers intimidate residents: they kidnap activists, conduct searches at private homes and rob businessmen,” the official said on his official Facebook profile.

Fedorov stressed that the city is on the verge of “a humanitarian catastrophe”. As part of the clashes, the Ukrinform news agency reported on Wednesday that the Russian Army broke into the house of journalist Svitlana Zalizetskaya, who lives in the city, and took her 75-year-old father hostage.

In fact, the president of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, Sergii Tomilenko, denounced through his social networks that Russian troops called the journalist “to blackmail her with the freedom of her father hostage”. “Russian invaders are trying to silence Svetlana Zalizetska,” he said.

Elsewhere in the country, the mayor of Chernigov, Vladyslav Atroshenko, pointed out that the city's cemetery cannot handle all the arriving dead, so they keep people in morgues and refrigerators longer than usual.

According to CNN, a new video shows the destruction of the city from the ground, with buildings severely damaged, streets covered with rubble and fires still active. The media also reported images in the city of Izium, where there is widespread destruction, buildings burned and bombed and bodies thrown in the streets.

Another city hit hardest by the bombing, Kharkiv, already has 1,143 buildings destroyed since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, 998 of which are residential buildings, according to its mayor Igor Terejov, as reported by the Suspilne chain.

According to the latest report by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, the “Russian occupiers” did not stop trying to resume offensive operations to capture Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.

Russian troops also destroyed a laboratory for radioactive waste management at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, as reported by the Ukrainian State Agency for the Management of Exclusion Zones.

According to this center, the laboratory cost more than 6 million euros, was located in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and was a complex with “significant analytical and research capabilities” in the field of radioactive waste management.

(With information from Europa Press)

KEEP READING: