As Russia renews shelling in Kharkiv, the civilian toll grows.

While fierce battles continue for the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east amid warnings of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, Russian shelling in and around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the northeast of the country, has grown more intense in recent days.

Fifteen civilians were killed and 16 were wounded in Kharkiv during daytime shelling, Oleg Sinegubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional administration, said on Tuesday. Russian forces were firing “en masse on residential areas in Kharkiv,” he said.

“The occupiers are deliberately beating residential areas where there are no military facilities,” he said. “This is real terrorism against civilians.”

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said this week that shelling had grown worse.

In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the shelling. “It simply destroys, simply kills,” he said, adding that “the Russian army is deaf to any rationality.” Read more

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