April 18 (UPI) — A barrage of Russian missiles into the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Monday killed several people, Ukrainian officials said — signaling that Moscow hasn’t given up trying to capture key cities in the western part of the country.
Officials said the missiles hit in Lviv overnight and killed at least seven people and injured several. They targeted three military sites and an auto parts store.
Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy said the wounded civilians include a child.
The attack in Lviv came days after Russia said that it intended to focus more on eastern Ukraine and withdrew forces from several northern locations, such as Kyiv and Chernihiv. Lviv is located about 40 miles from the Ukraine-Poland border in western Ukraine.
Monday’s missile strikes marked the first wartime deaths in Lviv, one of the locations where some Ukrainian fled to escape the violence in other parts of the country. Russia also recently struck a military facility in Yavoriy, near Lviv, that killed about three dozen people.
One of the locations hit by the missile strikes on Monday was a hotel that had been sheltering civilians from eastern Ukraine for weeks since the Russian war began in late February.
The Kremlin said on Monday that its forces attacked more than 300 targets across Ukraine, destroying four arms and military equipment depots and shooting down three planes and almost a dozen drones.
Meanwhile, pockets of Ukrainian forces continued to resist Russian bombardments in the southern city of Mariupol, preventing Moscow from taking complete control of the strategic port.
While Russian military officials claim that they control nearly all of Mariupol except for the Azovstal steel plant, Ukrainian officials said fighting continues in other parts of the city.
“The fighting in the Left Bank district has been ongoing all day long,” said Petro Andriushchenko, a Mariupol mayoral adviser, according to CNN.
“The occupiers continue to fire on and bomb Azovstal with all weapons. Realizing that the defenders are not going to give up, the occupiers’ plans are clear.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has promised to “fight to the end” to keep Russia from capturing Mariupol.
In the east, Luhansk regional military leaders continued to urge residents to evacuate immediately, warning of increased Russian military activity in the province. Luhansk is one of two regions that make up what’s known as the Donbas — a pro-Moscow separatist held area in the east that’s been fighting the Ukrainian government for nearly a decade.
Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, have said recently that the military has shifted its focus to eastern Ukraine in areas including the Donbas — which Putin declared to be independent of Ukraine just days before launching the invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday called for more weapons to turn away Russian forces and said that delays in receiving the equipment only gives Russia “permission” to kill Ukrainians.
