The death toll from a Russian strike on an apartment building in Southeast Ukraine's Dnipro has risen to at least 37. The dead also include two children.
The Russian strike on a multi-storey residential building on Saturday in Dnipro also injured 75 people, including 15 children. The strike was the latest in the continuous Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The latest reports also suggest that Russia is preparing for a long, protracted war and it could also launch a renewed offensive later this year.
Besides civilian housing, the Russians have also struck Ukraine's energy infrastructure and have caused widespread outages across Ukraine in recent months. Amid harsh winter, the damage to energy infrastructure and destruction of housing is adding to people's woes and displacing more people.
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Dnipro strike deadliest since summer
The Dnipro death toll made it the deadliest single attack on civilians since before the summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch.
The European Union's (EU) foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike, and others like it, “inhumane aggression” because it directly targeted civilians.
“There will be no impunity for these crimes,” said Borrell in a tweet on Sunday.
Asked about the strike on Monday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military doesn't target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defence actions.
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The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that it did not have the means to intercept the type of Russian missile used in Saturday's strike. The strike on the building came amid a wider barrage of Russian cruise missiles across Ukraine.
Fighting continues in Eastern Ukraine
Fierce fighting continued to rage in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province, where military analysts have said both sides are likely suffering heavy troop casualties. No independent verification of developments was possible.
Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk province make up the Donbas region, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Russian President Vladimir Putin identified as a focus from the war's outset. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv's forces there since 2014.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War's (ISW) latest map on Monday shows the latest fighting and territory controlled by the two sides.
Among other places, significant fighting is taking place in Lysychansk, Spirner, Pokrovske, Marinka, Avdiivka, Toretsk, and Bakhmut in the east. The Russian forces captured Soledar around Pokrovske recently in first major success in weeks.
The Russian and Belarusian air forces began a joint exercise on Monday in Belarus, which borders Ukraine and served as a staging ground for Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine. The drills are set to run through February 1, the Belarusian Defence Ministry said. Russia has sent its warplanes to Belarus for the drills.
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Russia preparing for 'decisive strategic action': Report
The Institute for the Study of War's (ISW) reported that there are signs that Russia is preparing for a "decisive strategic action" later this year.
In its daily update on Monday, the ISW said that the Russian offensive is "intended to end Ukraine’s string of operational successes and regain the initiative".
The ISW says that the Russian preparations are of the kind that a country would undertake before launching an invasion.
"The Kremlin is belatedly conducting personnel mobilisation, reorganisation, and industrial actions it probably should have undertaken before launching its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and is taking steps to conduct the 'special military operation' as a major conventional war," notes ISW.
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The ISW notes that Russia is changing the nature of Ukraine War. Since the onset, it has termed it as a "special military operation" but is now appears to turn it into a broader conventional war.
"While Putin has not changed his objectives for the war, there is emerging evidence that he is changing fundamental aspects of Russia’s approach to the war by undertaking several new lines of effort...The Russian military is conserving mobilized personnel for future use — an inflection from the Kremlin’s initial approach of rushing untrained bodies to the front in fall 2022...Putin is re-centralising control of the war effort in Ukraine under the Ministry of Defense and appointed Russia’s senior-most uniformed officer, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, as theater commander," notes ISW.
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The ISW notes Ukraine's Western partners "will need to continue supporting Ukraine in the long run".
NATO member nations have sought in recent days to reassure Ukraine that they will stay the course.
The United Kingdom has pledged tanks and the US military's new, expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces began in Germany on Sunday.
Other developments on Monday
Russian forces shelled the city of Kherson and the Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 14 others over the last 24 hours, regional Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said.
In the city of Kherson, the shelling damaged a hospital, a children disability center, a shipyard, critical infrastructure and apartment buildings.
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Russian forces struck the city of Zaporizhzhia, damaging industrial infrastructure and wounding five people, two of them children, the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko reported.
Russian air defences downed seven drones Monday over the Black Sea near the port of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed head of Sevastopol, reported.
(With AP inputs)
