HELL ON EARTH : Vladimir Putin’s blitz kills 20 and turns Ukraine region into raging fireball as cruise missiles rain down
Vladimir Putin unleashed his deadliest missile blitz on Ukraine for almost a month yesterday, killing more than 20 people and causing electrical blackouts in tens of thousands of homes.
Officials said more than 20 missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea in the devastating barrage which hit electrical substations close to railways and residential areas, plunging hundreds of thousands of frightened civilians into darkness.
Among those killed was a priest in the frontline region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The flurry of attacks came as Russia prepares to celebrate Victory Day on May 9, marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany.
It is feared Putin will use the occasion to declare an ‘all-out war’ on Ukraine rather than what he currently calls a ‘special military operation’.
The Russian military said yesterday it had used sea and air-launched guided weapons, including Kalibr cruise missiles fired from submarines, to destroy power facilities at five railway stations across Ukraine, while artillery and aircraft also struck troop strongholds and fuel and ammunition depots.
Strikes in the frontline Donbas area, where an oil depot was hit, killed 21, according to the governor of the eastern Donetsk region.
It was the single largest loss of life since a missile attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk killed 59 a month ago.
Shocked residents in the western city of Lviv were rocked by explosions on Tuesday evening, in the first attacks there since mid-April.
Officials said six rockets were fired directly on western Ukraine, where millions of refugees have fled since Putin’s invasion on February 24.
Two missiles were shot down by Ukraine’s air defences, three hit Lviv and one hit the neighbouring region of Zakarpattia.
One 24-year-old victim, who needed an urgent operation to remove bomb fragments from his thigh, was parking his motorbike outside his home in Lviv when the blast hit.
He said: ‘When I took off my helmet, I saw a rocket flying in my face. It fell behind a concrete wall, about ten metres from me. The garage I was standing near exploded.
‘Only when I ran home did I notice that there were fragments in my leg.’
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu justified the attacks by saying Lviv had been a gateway for Nato weaponry.
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