Latest news with #Pavlohrad
BBC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Ukraine war: Buildings burn after renewed Russian air attacks
At least three people have died following another widespread air bombardment by Russia. Two people were killed in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the regional governor, Sergiy Lysak, said, while a woman died of her injuries after being rescued from a burning apartment in Odesa, according to emergency services. President Volodymyr Zelensky said 10 regions of Ukraine, including a number of cities, were hit in the overnight assault. Ukraine's military said more than 340 explosive and dummy drones and 35 cruise and ballistic missiles were used. Although it said 90% of these were shot down, suppressed electronically or lost, more than 30 got through. One of the strikes hit a residential block in the southern city of Odesa, causing a fire on its upper floors. Rescuers said five people were rescued from burning apartments - including the woman who later died. At least another six people were wounded. The eastern city of Pavlohrad was subjected to what Serhiy Lysak called a "hellish night and morning". He said there had been "explosion after explosion" caused by drone and missile strikes, adding it had been the biggest-scale attack on the city to date. Targets reportedly included industrial sites, a fire department, a clinic, a school, and a cultural wrote of "important infrastructure" being damaged there. A missile plant is based in Pavlohrad, and the city has been struck in the past by defence ministry said it struck military-industrial enterprises that produce components for missiles and drones overnight, but did not specify where. Is Ukraine's new drone scheme gamifying war?Ukrainians unimpressed by Trump's 50-day ultimatum to Putin The north-eastern city of Sumy was also attacked. Zelensky said critical infrastructure had been damaged, cutting power to several thousand families. There have also been strikes - including with guided bombs - on another town in the region, Shostka, which lies less than 50km (30 miles) from the Russian border. Officials said a "targeted hit" there had caused a fire. They did not say what had been struck. Unverified video footage posted online purportedly of the incident shows a fierce fire and billowing clouds of grey once again stressed the importance of bolstering air defences, both in terms of supplies from allies, but also producing them in Ukraine, including more interceptor drones. The Trump administration recently moved to free up weapons supplies, even if some of these - including much-needed Patriot air defences - will be paid for by other Nato allies. Russia said it shot down more than 70 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday, most of them over the regions of Rostov, Moscow and Bryansk. The acting governor of Rostov, Yuri Slyusar, said the attack had been massive, affecting areas close to the border with occupied parts of Ukraine. Houses, he said, were damaged by what he said had been falling debris, and several settlements suffered temporary power cuts. Slyusar said one railway worker had been injured, and rail traffic disrupted. Several supply routes into Ukraine run through the on the front lines, Russian forces continue to attack one of their key objectives - the town of Pokrovsk in the eastern region of Donetsk. Late on Friday, Ukraine's commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, acknowledged it faced increasing pressure, but insisted its defence was "steadfast". He said Russia had been trying to get to the city with small groups of soldiers attacking for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes, claiming one such group had been destroyed. Russia has been trying to encircle the Pokrovsk for months.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Russia launches ‘hellish' aerial attack on eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad
Russia launched its biggest ever attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad early on Saturday, as part of a large wave of strikes across the country involving hundreds of kamikaze drones and ballistic missiles. The six-hour bombardment was the worst in the city's history. The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergey Lysak, said a factory was damaged, a fire station destroyed and a five-storey residential building hit. 'A hellish night and morning for Pavlohrad. The most intense attack on the city. Explosion after explosion. Russian terrorists targeted it with missiles and drones,' Lysak said. Drones could be heard flying over Pavlohrad in the early hours of Saturday. There were cacophonous booms and orange explosions lighting up the night sky. The streets echoed with machine-gun fire as anti-aircraft units tried to shoot them down. In the morning, thick black smoke hung above the city. There were several fires. One exhausted resident, Oleh, said it was the worst night he had known. 'Nobody slept. We were all in shelters. There was a thunderstorm as well. We had explosions and rain together,' he said. The attack came soon after Gen Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, flew back to Washington after a six-day visit to Kyiv. This week the White House announced a large-scale arms package to Ukraine, including additional Patriot anti-aircraft systems, to be paid for by European allies. The Kremlin refrained from carrying out a large-scale bombardment while Kellogg was in the country. Social media was awash with memes depicting Kellogg as a cat protecting the capital, since Keith sounds similar to 'kit', or cat in Ukrainian. On Friday, Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev promised Moscow would escalate its aerial attacks in response to the EU's latest sanctions package, which was agreed after the pro-Kremlin government in Slovakia dropped its objections. The city of Pavlohrad is a strategic hub for the Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Russian troops are close to capturing territory in the region – which borders Donetsk province – for the first time since Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion. In recent days they have captured several neighbouring villages. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion Early on Saturday, Russian forces also targeted the Black Sea port of Odesa, setting fire to a nine-storey apartment building, the city's mayor said. Five people were rescued from the top floor, and one woman subsequently died. Odesa's mayor, Hennady Trukhanov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said at least 20 drones had converged on the city, a frequent target of Russian strikes. 'Civilian structure has been damaged as a result of the attack,' Trukhanov wrote. 'A high-rise apartment block is on fire. Rescuers are taking people out from the flames.' Ukraine's new prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, said Moscow had launched another 'brutal attack' on Odesa and other Ukrainian cities. 'One person killed, several more wounded, families destroyed. This is the cost of hesitation. Without bold response, the strikes will come again,' she said.
Telegraph
13-07-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The tortured Ukrainian veteran turning shrapnel into a war museum
Instead of an entrance hall, 'Grandpa's' war museum makes use of the dusty, weed-strewn pavement by the side of the road. A Russian tank, an armoured personnel carrier and a howitzer barrel are displayed to lure in visitors heading east from the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad. On the floor lie a row of Kinzhal and Kalibr cruise missiles with their tips pointed out at the passing cars. These are only a handful of the treasures collected by the museum's founder and proprietor, 67-year-old Anatoly 'Grandpa' Tokarev, a former reconnaissance commander in the Ukrainian army. 'That was the first Kalibr that hit Pavlohrad,' says Mr Tokarev, pointing at a flower pot shaped from the missile's base and painted with licks of fire. 'We went out and collected it as a souvenir.' Formed on the site of a roadside cafe, 'Grandpa's' may lack the prestige of the Imperial War Museum, but it is shaped by the same desire to honour the memory of the dead and inform the next generation, as far as possible, of what they went through. In Mr Tokarev, it has an overseer as resourceful and dedicated as any of the great collectors who set up the Natural History Museum, Ashmolean or Getty. In its way, his own body could be an exhibit: both his legs were broken, and one shot through, during a month-long stint being tortured by the FSB after he was captured in Russian-occupied Ukraine in 2014. Before leading The Telegraph on an impromptu tour of the facility, he hands everyone a bottle of water and a cup of machine coffee. The day is hot, and a Ukrainian flag hangs limply on its pole. 'Have that first, then we'll talk,' he says. When Mr Tokarev retired from the military in 2016, he set up a cafe here along with his wife, a sniper in the Ukrainian army. But over time, the business began to irk them. Customers would come in to chat and unwind, seemingly unbothered by the war that continued, with tit-for-tat exchanges of artillery fire, less than 100 miles away to the east. 'My wife saw people relaxing, drinking and everything else. She said: 'Enough'. And, in 2019, we decided to make the museum,' says Mr Tokarev. Some of the first exhibits were items he had squirrelled away in service. But his deep connection with the Ukrainian military provided a small army of helpers, scouts and sources to broaden the collection. Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the archive has mushroomed. Russia's war has left traces across the country, from Shahed drones to stingers, mortars to mines, howitzers to hand grenades. It has also left a trail of death, which Mr Tokarev endeavours to chart in his own way. On the pavement outside the museum stands a cross fashioned from 350kg of shrapnel, bearing the dog tags of local Pavlohrad soldiers who died before 2019. A falling bombshell has been welded to the front. Behind it, on the wall of the museum, are memorial plaques for around 400 more soldiers, many of whom Mr Tokarev knew personally. 'He was a martial arts expert,' he says, pointing to one young man's picture. 'He died when the Russians took Kherson,' he adds by another. A large portion of the wall lies blank, waiting for the next death to be painstakingly confirmed. 'I hire people to make the plaques. It's a never-ending process, unfortunately,' he says. Children's drawings have been stuck to one side of a corridor. Entrance to the museum is free, and several busloads of school pupils arrive per week. In the drawings, there are pillboxes, helicopters, machine guns and stickmen soldiers, all sketched with the diligent madness of the under-10s. 'Every morning I see soldiers outside school,' one boy has written, 'I pray you will be alive when the war ends.' 'The most important thing is that I teach the children never to forget these guys who died, and always to stand up for them,' says Mr Tokarev, whose gruff demeanour, bright-blue eyes and sometimes cryptic way of speaking make him almost like a character from a children's book himself. To be sure, the curiosity of youth runs through his veins. 'War is always changing and always the same,' he says, showing off a rack of uniforms, including Nazi, Ukrainian and Russian, in one dingy corner of the museum. He is reluctant to move into the next room without ensuring his guests have appreciated an old Cossack sword, which he draws from its sheath to wield. Then there is a pack of playing cards featuring the Russian elite, with Putin as the six of spades and General Sergei Shoigu as the ace of clubs. Would he like to kill them all? 'Well, they'll get themselves killed,' Mr Tokarev says. 'The thing is, if you kill them, nothing will change. 89 per cent of the population in Russia is completely brainwashed.' To this day, Mr Tokarev keeps in touch with members of the Salty Hedgehogs, the reconnaissance group in which he served and whose logo his T-shirt bears. At one point, he brings up a desperate text message on his phone from a soldier facing encirclement. 'We helped get them out,' he says, not long after proffering a signed flag given to him as a gift by General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army. Some things he refuses to divulge. Why is his left hand missing its fingertips? How did he get hold of a decoy Shahed? Or a British-made NLAW missile? 'I asked nicely,' is all he will say of how his collection came to include a border post from the invaded Russian region of Kursk. On the way out, Mr Tokarev beckons to a small garden. Shrapnel has been turned into thin sculptures of flowers. As the sun sets, he insists he has never paid for a single weapon on show, nor the fresh haul of wrecked metal that lies in an alleyway. But the collection as a whole is priceless. 'My museum,' he says, 'is worth more than my life.'
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Two women injured and infrastructure damaged in Russian attack on Dnipro
The Russians launched a missile and drone attack on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the night of 6-7 June, injuring women aged 45 and 88. Source: Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration Details: Infrastructure, premises belonging to a business, an educational institution and several dozen garages were damaged in the city of Dnipro. A car caught fire, three others were damaged and windows were shattered in high-rise buildings. The city of Pavlohrad came under the Russian attack too. Premises belonging to a business and high-rise buildings were wrecked there. Cars caught fire, with nine of them destroyed. The Russians resumed strikes on the Nikopol district in the morning, targeting the city of Nikopol and the Marganets hromada with FPV drones and heavy artillery. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.] A nine-storey building was damaged in Nikopol. Six Russian missiles and 27 drones were downed over the oblast. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia launches large-scale attack on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast: businesses, houses and petrol station damaged
Russian forces launched a large-scale attack on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast using missiles, kamikaze drones, guided bombs and artillery on the night of 24-25 May. Several districts were hit, with damage reported to industrial facilities, residential buildings and infrastructure. Source: Serhii Lysak, Head of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, on Telegram Details: Lysak reported that Russian Shahed drones and missiles struck an industrial company in the city of Pavlohrad, causing a fire that was promptly extinguished by firefighters. Quote: "The enemy also targeted the city of Dnipro with a drone. A three-storey building caught fire. The fire was promptly extinguished." Details: The Russians used drones and guided aerial bombs against the Mezhova, Novopavlivka, and Vasylkivka hromadas in the Synelnykove district. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.] As a result of the attacks, a house, a petrol station and another company were damaged. In the Nikopol district, Russian forces used FPV drones, artillery and munitions dropped from UAVs. The city of Nikopol, as well as the Marhanets and Pokrov hromadas, were affected. One apartment building and four houses were damaged. A fire broke out in one of the houses. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
