A Ukrainian official says a Russian artillery attack on a military unit in Okhtyrka, a city between Kharkiv and Kyiv, killed at least 70 Ukrainian soldiers on Monday.
Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, head of the Sumy Regional State Administration, posted photographs of the charred shell of a four-story building and rescuers searching rubble.
This is coming as Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian news outlet, is reporting air raid sirens in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities, including Vinnytsia, Uman and Cherkasy.
It also cited a hospital administrator saying that Russian shelling has hit a maternity hospital in the village of Buzova near Kyiv. “All people were evacuated from the building,” it
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U.S. citizens should consider leaving Russia immediately on commercial flights, the State Department said on Sunday, citing an increasing number of airlines canceling flights and countries closing their airspace to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
“U.S. citizens should consider departing Russia immediately via commercial options still available,” said a security alert dated Feb. 27 on the web site of U.S. embassy in Moscow.
It has asked U.S. citizens to have “a contingency plan that does not rely on U.S. government assistance.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two, has unleashed a barrage of Western reprisals, with U.S. and European governments imposing sanctions on Russian banks and financial institutions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the attack a “special operation” through which he aims to demilitarise Moscow’s southern neighbor.
The State Department has kept its travel advisory for Russia at “Level 4: Do Not Travel”. On Feb. 20, the U.S. embassy in Moscow had advised Americans in the country to have an evacuation plan, citing the threat of attacks in Moscow and along the Russian border with Ukraine.
