A blood transfusion centre, a university and an aeronautics facility in Ukraine have all been left devastated following deadly air raids as Russian and Ukrainian forces intensified on Saturday their attacks following a strike by Kyiv on a Russian tanker in the Black Sea.
On Saturday night, there were attacks while officials from 40 countries, including China, India, and the United States, held discussions in Saudi Arabia on how to bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials blamed Russia for the attack on the blood centre in the eastern town of Kupiansk late on Saturday, while Moscow-installed officials accused Kyiv of using cluster munitions to damage a university in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack on Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region as a “war crime” and said “there are dead and wounded”.
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He did not say how many were killed or injured.
Russian forces used a ‘guided aerial bomb’ in the attack, he said, adding that rescue workers were extinguishing a fire at the scene.
‘This war crime says everything about Russian aggression,’ he added.
Hours after Zelenskyy’s report, the Moscow-installed governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, said a university building in the area was in flames due to Ukrainian shelling.
He said preliminary information indicated the cause of the fire was the controversial cluster munitions.
The attacks were the latest in a day that had seen Moscow’s forces hit a Ukrainian aeronautics facility and Kyiv’s forces damage a Russian tanker in the Black Sea.
The aeronautics facility belonged to Motor Sich, a maker of plane and helicopter engines as well as other components. The site is located near the city of Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, about 300km (190 miles) southwest of Kyiv.
The damaged Russian tanker was a ‘civilian’ vessel, according to officials in Moscow, who denounced Kyiv’s ‘terrorist attack’ and pledged retaliation. Ukrainian officials, however, told reporters that the SIG tanker was transporting fuel to Russian forces fighting in their country.
The attack briefly halted traffic on the Kerch Bridge which connects the Crimean Peninsula to Russia, as well as ferry transport.
It was the second such raid in 24 hours.
Ukraine had struck the Russian port of Novorossiysk earlier on Friday.