Russia installed a military base in Melitopol and launched a new offensive to take the main cities of Ukraine

The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, denounced that Russian troops have installed a military base near the city’s airfield, from where they launch missiles towards other regions of Ukraine.

“These missiles will be destroyed, so the civilians of Melitopol are a living shield of the Russian Army. Every day, the Russian occupiers intimidate the residents: they kidnap activists, carry out searches in private houses and rob businessmen ”, the official pointed out on his official Facebook profile.

Fedorov stressed that the city is on the brink “of a humanitarian catastrophe.” As part of the clashes, the Ukrinform news agency reported Wednesday that the Russian Army broke into the house of journalist Svetlana Zaretskaya, who lives in the city, and took her 75-year-old father hostage.

In fact, the president of the National Union of Ukrainian Journalists, Sergii Tomilenko, denounced through his social networks that the Russian troops called the journalist “to blackmail her with the freedom of her hostage father.” “The Russian invaders are trying to silence Svetlana Zalizetska,” he said.

Elsewhere in the country, Chernihiv Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko said the city’s cemetery can’t handle all the incoming dead, keeping people in morgues and refrigerators longer than normal.

As reported by the CNN chain, a new video shows the destruction of the city from the ground, with buildings badly damaged, streets covered with rubble and fires still active. The outlet also reported images in the city of Izium, where there is widespread destruction, buildings burned and bombed, and bodies lying in the streets.

Another of the cities hardest hit by bombing, Kharkiv, already has 1,143 buildings destroyed since the invasion of Ukraine began, 998 of which are residential buildings, according to its mayor Igor Terejov, as reported by the Suspilne chain.

According to the latest report of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Facebook, the “Russian occupiers” did not stop trying to resume offensive operations to capture Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.

Russian troops also destroyed a laboratory for radioactive waste management at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian State Agency for the Management of Exclusion Zones.

According to this center, the laboratory cost more than 6 million euros, was located in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and was a complex with “important analytical and research capabilities” in the field of radioactive waste management.