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Five children were injured in a Russian ballistic missile strike that damaged a nursery and a college in Dnipro, Ukraine.
The school day was nearly over when the air raid alert went off in the industrial city straddling the banks of the River Dnipro on Tuesday afternoon.
Children had enough time to take cover in a bomb shelter before missiles hit, causing damage to an educational facility.
But 18 people were injured in the strike, including five children aged 14 to 17, Serhii Lysak, head of Dnipropetrovsk region’s Military Administration, said on Telegram.
Blood could be seen splattered on the rear of a Toyota Auris, trees were toppled and windows were shattered in the aftermath of the attack.
Russia had terrorised the city with a wave of drones the previous night, with Ukraine’s air defences shooting down nine Iranian-made Shaheds over the region.
Falling debris sparked two fires in the city, damaging a fire station and a two-storey building, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
Elsewhere Ukraine destroyed at least 20 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles as it fended off one of Putin’s single biggest assaults of the invasion so far.
Russia has tried to capitalise on the gains it made in Donetsk in recent months since the fall of Bakhmut.
The invading forces captured Avdiivka in February, losing a reported 19,000 soldiers in the battle to take the city on the outskirts of Donetsk.
A massive Russian convoy of 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles rolled west towards Tonenke on March 30.
But the all-out assault on the fiercely-fought over town slowed to a snail’s pace as it came to a mined dirt track running between barren fields.
The delay made the Russian column an easy target for the drone pilots of Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade ‘Sicheslav’, who picked them off one by one.
Footage from drone-mounted cameras shows tanks erupting into flames as the Ukrainian drones blew them to pieces.
Reminiscent of the sluggish armoured assaults early in the full-scale invasion, the Russian convoy lost nearly half its vehicles before commanders ordered a retreat.
The losses were confirmed by Russian milbloggers, along with satellite footage shared by the Institute for the Study of War.
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Among the destroyed vehicles were T-90 tanks costing nearly £3.6million, and Soviet-era T-62s.
Tonenke was reported to have fallen to Russian advances in March, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
But the Ukrainian line seems to have held out in some areas.
President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has dropped the army draft age from 27 to 25 in a bid to generate more manpower to fight advancing Russian forces.
Vladimir Putin has called up yet another 150,000 people for statutory military service in Russia’s highest conscription drive in eight years.
Russia already has a ‘significant advantage’, outmatching Ukraine in munitions and equipment, according to British Defence Intelligence.
With 30,000 additional personnel being recruited each month, Russia is likely to continue absorbing losses and launching attacks.
Russia’s bombardment of the eastern city of Kharkiv sparked an exodus of thousands as drone and missile attacks knocked out the city’s heating and electricity.
Videos circulating on Telegram showed major traffic jams on highways leading out of the city.
Shops and restaurants closed since the invasion were starting to reopen last summer, but this revival has been disrupted by Russian strikes.
Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov admitted the destruction of critical energy infrastructure in the city, and decreed that state-provided residential heating would be turned off from today.
‘The enemy effectively destroyed the main power facilities that supplied our city with electricity,’ he said.
‘All these days, utility and power engineers have been working…to restore services to residential buildings. Although they have partially succeeded, the electricity shortage is still significant.
‘For this reason, the only possible measure to reduce the load on the power system is to end heating [supplies] ahead of schedule.
‘Only this will allow us to provide electricity to the maximum number of consumers and supply hot water to homes.
‘We will start disconnecting the heat supply [on Tuesday].’
Ukraine has fought back with drone attacks, taking out a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
A kamikaze drone caused a massive fireball as it smashed into a building in the Russian city of Yelabuga, in Tatarstan, some 700 miles from Ukraine’s border.
It is reported that a Ukrainian UJ-22 Airborne – which can carry 20kg of explosives – was used in the attack.
The target is believed to be a plant assembling Iranian Shahed drones used in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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