Russia bombed civilian areas in the cities of Dnipro and Lutsk

Shelling hit civilian areas in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine hitherto sheltered from attack, on Friday, Ukrainian emergency services said, reporting one casualty.

Early in the morning “there have been three airstrikes in the city, hitting a kindergarten, an apartment building and a two-storey shoe factory where a fire has broken out. One person has died,” they said in a statement.

Meanwhile, several explosions were heard this morning in the city of Lutsk, in northwestern Ukraine and very close to the border with Poland, according to its mayor, Igor Polischuk, who asked the inhabitants to quickly go to shelters.

“Explosions near the airfield. Everyone to the shelter!” said the mayor through Facebook, who asked the neighbours not to publish photos, addresses, or establish coordinates, in what could be the first Russian attack against this city, in the Wallonia region, near the border with Poland and also neighbouring Lviv.

The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, reported early this Friday the rescue of 40,000 people through humanitarian corridors and denounced that Russia has not ceased the attacks in Mariupol and Volnovaja.

“One of the main tasks this Thursday was the organization of humanitarian corridors. Sumy, Trostyanets, Krasnopillia, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Izium. During this day almost 40,000 of ours have already left. Finally, they were given security in Poltava, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Zaporizhia, Dnipro, Lviv. It was also possible to deliver humanitarian supplies: hundreds of tons of food and medicine,” Zelensky stressed in a speech to the nation.

For her part, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that in the last two days, 60,000 civilians were successfully evacuated from the city of Sumy in the northeast of the country.

Thus, the president emphasized that “taking into account the work of the humanitarian corridors in the previous two days”, “some one hundred thousand people” has already been evacuated.

Among the latest, most reiterated demands by the president in the context of the conflict triggered by the Russian invasion is the ceasefire in Mariupol and Volnovaja.