The mayor’s office in a key eastern Ukrainian city controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists was hit by rockets, Russian state agencies reported. According to the separatist authorities, four people were injured. According to RIA Novosti, the Donetsk municipal building was “seriously damaged” by the attack, which local separatist authorities blamed on Ukraine. Kremlin-backed separatist authorities have previously accused Ukraine of numerous attacks on infrastructure and residential targets in the occupied territories, often using US-supplied long-range HIMARS rockets, without providing corroborating information. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the situation near Bakhmut “the most difficult”, a few days after pro-Russian forces announced they were closing in on the city. Rescuers clear land where fierce fighting has broken out near the recently liberated town of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. As officials clear the landscape of the last traces of Russian occupation, mass graves, believed to be filled with the bodies of civilians, are exhumed.
