Russia pounds Kharkiv, Donetsk regions

Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Donetsk regions continued to be hit by deadly strikes from Russia on Saturday.
Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, said on Saturday that a Russian guided bomb attack on a residential building killed two people and injured 10 others, including children, in the village of Cherkaska Lozova.
“Two women were killed. One was removed from the rubble, the other died in an ambulance,” he said.
A day earlier, Syniehubov reported that at least seven people were killed and nearly 100 injured, including at least 22 children, when a Russian strike on Kharkiv hit a high-rise residential building and playground.
In the Donetsk region, five people were killed by Russian shelling on Saturday in Chasiv Yar, according to Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk regional government.
“Chasiv Yar — is a city in which normal life has been impossible for more than two years. Don’t turn yourself into a Russian target! Evacuate!” he wrote on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had captured the settlement of Verezamske, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, part of incremental gains claimed by Moscow’s forces at a time when Ukrainian troops are operating in Russia’s Kursk region following their surprise cross-border attack on August 6.
The reports could not immediately be confirmed.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, visited the Pentagon on Friday and told CNN that the U.S. administration is still considering Kyiv’s request to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons to hit deeper inside Russia, saying he has presented a list of proposed targets to senior U.S. officials.
“We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect our citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard,” Umerov said in the Friday interview.
Umerov, who met on Friday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, told CNN that “we are showing that the airfields that they are using to hit our cities are within the range of deep strikes.”
“They’re killing our citizens. That’s why we want to deter them, we want to stop them, we don’t want [to] allow their aviation to come closer to our borders to bomb the cities,” he said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the United States and other allies to ease restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), saying the use of such weapons would allow Kyiv to strike sites inside Russia used by the Kremlin to launch attacks against civilian areas in Ukraine.
Deadly Russian attacks could be prevented “by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror,” the president said.
“We talk about this every day with our partners. We persuade. We present arguments,” he said in his nightly video address.
He said eliminating the threat of Russia’s guided aerial bombs would be “a strong step to force Russia to seek an end to the war and a just peace.”
“We need the capabilities to truly and fully protect Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he said, in appealing to the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
The United States and other allies of Ukraine have placed restrictions on the use of the weapons over concerns that it could escalate the war.
Washington has signaled it has given its approval to Kyiv to strike over the border in response to Russian attacks into Ukraine but has resisted further loosening of restrictions.
“You’ve heard us say that the Ukrainians can use U.S. security assistance to defend themselves from cross-border attacks, in other words counterfire,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said this week.
“But as it relates to long-range strike, deep strikes into Russia, our policy has not changed,” he added.
Umerov also said the recent dismissal of Air Force chief Mykola Oleshchuk was “not related” to the crash of an F-16 fighter jet and was more related to a “rotation” of leadership.
“I would probably say that this is a rotation. These are two separate questions … at this stage, I would not link them,” Umerov said.
“We are analyzing what happened [in regard to the crash]. We have also opened this case to our partners so that they can also analyze it and investigate it with us,” he added.
Zelenskyy dismissed Oleshchuk from his post as commander of the Air Force on Friday, a move that came after Ukraine lost the first F-16 fighter jet provided by Western partners. The pilot was killed in the crash.