Ukrainian strike kills at least two and injures more in occupied Donetsk

At least two people were killed and another seven injured when a shopping centre in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine came under Ukrainian shelling on Friday, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.

The Moscow-installed head of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” Denis Pushilin said that the Galaktika shopping centre in the regional capital Donetsk caught fire after a Ukrainian artillery shell landed on it. Pushilin added that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) had also targeted a hospital, though there has been no evidence to confirm this.

The Ukrainians had been “launching targeted, massive strikes” on the city of Donetsk since midday, Pushilin said on Telegram, adding that “fire and rescue units were working at the site” but had been struggling to rescue survivors due to the scale of the fire.

State-affiliated Russian Telegram channel Mash wrote that at least 100 people had been inside the shopping centre when it came under shelling.

The Donetsk region has been partially occupied by Russian separatists since 2014, and much of the region was illegally absorbed by Russia in 2022. Moscow said in June that Kyiv should accept its demand that the whole region become part of Russia as a precondition for peace talks, despite the fact that Russia still doesn’t control the entire region, a demand the Ukrainian side flat-out rejected.

Russia now appears to have redeployed several thousand troops from the frontline in eastern Ukraine to its southwestern Kursk region to repel the 10-day long Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) incursion into Russian territory, a senior US official told CNN on Thursday.