Russian state news agencies reported that Ukrainian forces fired a strike at an air defense system protecting the skies over Luhansk, the capital of one of two states created by Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. The strike is the latest in a series of strikes by Ukraine against high-value targets such as ammunition depots and command posts since multiple launch missile systems known as Himars began arriving from the US last month. “The occupiers have already felt very well what modern artillery is, and they will have no safe rear anywhere on our land,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a videotaped speech overnight. Footage posted on social media by Luhansk residents late Tuesday showed a large explosion. Russian military correspondents reported on social media that an ammunition dump in the industrial area of ​​Luhansk had been hit. “The armed forces of Ukraine launched a massive attack on the military air defense unit, which ensures the security of the city of Luhansk,” said Andriy Marochko, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed People’s Militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic.

Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

          Photo: GLEB GARANICH / REUTERS

Emergency workers search for bodies under rubble in Chasiv Yar after a Russian attack.

          Photo: Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal

The Luhansk People’s Republic later reported that nine missiles were fired into Luhansk by US-made Himards. Russian forces claimed control of the entire Luhansk region earlier this month after weeks of fierce fighting that has taken its toll on both sides. Serhiy Haidai, the exiled governor of Luhansk, said strikes on Russian ammunition depots had disrupted supplies, marking an increase in activity by Russian subversion and reconnaissance teams probing Ukrainian lines for weak spots. At the same time, the Russian military has stepped up missile attacks on positions far from the front lines. The death toll from the Russian attack on a residential building in Chasiv Yar over the weekend has risen to 47, including a child, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office. Nine people were pulled alive from the rubble, he said.

Residents receive humanitarian aid in the city of Lysychansk, in eastern Ukraine.

          Photo: olga maltseva/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A damaged residential area in Severodonetsk, eastern Ukraine.

          Photo: olga maltseva/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Russian troops bombarded Dnipropetrovsk’s Nikopol district overnight using multiple-launch rocket systems, according to Ukrainian official Valentyn Reznichenko. Since Russia seized Luhansk, it has targeted the Donetsk region, part of which is already controlled by Russia and separatist forces. Seizing the rest of the region would give Moscow full control of the Donbass region, which the Kremlin has made a priority since it withdrew its forces from central Ukraine in late March. “In Donbass, offensive efforts are not stopping, the situation there is not getting easier and the losses are not getting smaller,” Mr. Zelensky said. The Russian-backed head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said on Wednesday that Russian and separatist forces were advancing on the cities of Shiversk and Solendar, according to Russian state news agency TASS. The towns lie between Severodonetsk, which Russia captured late last month, and the city of Sloviansk, which is one of Moscow’s next targets, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. . Mr. Pushilin also said that more than 100 cases of captured Ukrainian fighters are ready to be brought to court. Some of the cases will be heard by a jury, others by a jury, he said. Last month, a court in the Donetsk People’s Republic sentenced three foreign fighters — two from the United Kingdom, who had lived in Ukraine for years before the conflict, and one from Morocco, who has Ukrainian citizenship — to death, accusing them of that they were working as mercenaries. Mr Pushilin said the three men — Aiden Ashlin and Sean Pinner from the UK and Moroccan-born Brahim Saadoun — appealed their sentences but would face death by firing squad if their appeals were rejected. Write to Isabel Coles at [email protected] and Evan Gershkovich at [email protected] Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8