Russia launched artillery barrages in southern and eastern Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more.

The worst civilian toll was in the southern city of Kherson, which was liberated last month from Russian occupying forces. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general confirmed that eight people had been killed.

The Kherson region’s governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said another 58 civilians had been injured in the rocket attacks, which had hit a busy residential part of Kherson, damaging buildings and cars.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, condemned the attack in a social media post. He attached photographs from the scene, saying: “Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’. But this is not sensitive content. It is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

“The terrorist country continues to carry Russian peace in the form of shelling of the civilian population. Kherson. In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city. These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.

“The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”

Yanushevych said: “On a weekend, on the eve of Christmas, the Russians attacked the city centre. They attacked the market, shopping centre, residential buildings, administrative buildings, the places where the most people are.”

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The deputy chair of the regional council, Yuriy Sobolevsky, said a missile had landed next to a supermarket by the city’s Freedom Square. “There were civilians there, each of whom lived their own life, went about their own business,” he said, noting the presence of a girl selling sim cards, others unloading items from a truck and passersby.

Russia did not immediately comment. Vladimir Putin told Russia’s defence industry chiefs on Friday to provide the army with “everything it needs”.

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The liberation of Kherson last month marked a major battlefield gain for Kyiv, reconquered after Russian forces retreated to the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Since then, however, inhabitants have faced constant Russian shelling, forcing hundreds of people to flee.

“The Russians first came to Kherson, looted it and killed a lot of people. Now that they have fled, they are still trying to destroy it,” Konstantin, a resident said. “But there is no panic. People are just filled with rage towards Russia.”

Ukrainians – like Russians have previously celebrated Christmas on 7 January, but the country’s Orthodox church announced in November that celebrations could from now on be held on 25 December, underlying the rift with Russian culture and tradition in the wake of the invasion.

The eastern frontline town of Bakhmut was also the target of intense Russian artillery fire.

Zelenskiy said in a video message that he had met his top military commanders to review the state of the conflict, insisting that his government was “preparing for various scenarios of action by the terrorist state, and we will respond”.

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Switching to Russian, he said: “Citizens of Russia must clearly understand that terror never goes without a response.”

The Ukrainian government has warned Putin could launch a fresh offensive in the new year, possibly reopening a northern front from Belarus.

The UK defence ministry, however, said Russia was having to limit its long-range attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure sites because of the limited availability of cruise missiles.

In one of its daily statements on the Ukrainian conflict, the ministry said Russia was also unlikely to have built up its stockpiles of artillery shells and rockets to the level that would be needed to conduct large-scale offensive operations.

“A vulnerability of Russia’s current operational design is that even just sustaining defensive operations along its lengthy frontline requires a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets,” the ministry statement said.

Zelenskiy’s top adviser, Mikhailo Podolyak, said Iran planned to step up the supply of military drones to replenish the Russian arsenal and called for the “liquidation” of Iranian drone factories and the arrest of suppliers.

The Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, travelled to Moscow on Saturday for a series of meetings with senior Russian officials, including Putin.

His visit comes days after Putin made a rare trip to the Belarusian capital of Minsk.




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