A Russian bombing killed a 72-year-old priest in the courtyard of his church near Kherson, Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Tuesday.
“The Russian army bombarded the Bilozerka site with artillery, hitting the courtyard of a church and killing the priest,” Yermak wrote on Facebook, posting images of wreckage near a church.
A 76-year-old woman was also injured in the attack, he said. Four houses, the post office, critical infrastructure sites, and the main square were damaged, the Ukrainian official added.
The city of Bilozerka is located about ten kilometers west of the city of Kherson, a regional center that was liberated by the Ukrainian army in November and partially flooded after the destruction of a dam on the Dnieper River, about which Moscow and Kyiv blame each other.
After the recapture of Cherson by the Ukrainians, the Russian army regularly bombards the city and its surroundings from the eastern bank of the Dnieper, which is a natural obstacle to the advance of Ukrainian military forces. The latter has launched a counter-attack in the south and east of the country with the aim of recapturing all the territory occupied by the Russians.
Source: ANA-MPA