Ukraine War: Dead and missing after shelling of Russian-occupied city

According to local authorities, at least 15 people were killed in the shelling of the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which was occupied by Russian troops. Another ten were injured.

“The Ukrainian armed forces have shelled a bakery in Lysychansk, and there are civilians under the rubble,” wrote the head of the Russian-annexed Luhansk region, Leonid Passechnik, on his Telegram channel.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Sakharova spoke of “terrorist acts by Ukrainian neo-Nazis.” Kiev knew that there were a lot of people in the bakery at the time and deliberately chose this target, the spokeswoman claimed. She called for international condemnation of the attack, especially in the West, since Lysychansk was attacked with Western weapon systems. According to authorities, the city was shelled with Himars rocket artillery.

The information on the possible number of buried people varies. Passetschnik spoke of up to 40 people who could be lying under the collapsed two-story building. The local civil defense only announced that around ten people had been discovered under the rubble so far – including dead people. Ukraine has not yet commented on the attack. The Russian information could not be independently verified.

Ten kilometers from the front line

Before the war, Lysychansk was a large city with around 100,000 inhabitants. In the summer of 2022 it was taken by Russian troops after heavy fighting. The population at that time is said to have been less than 10,000. According to official Russian figures, this number will have risen to 37,000 by autumn 2023.

The city, which together with neighboring Sievierodonetsk formed an industrial conurbation in the northeast of Ukraine, is still heavily influenced by the war. Lysychansk is only about ten kilometers from the front line.