The Russia-Ukraine war have brought more destruction, with fresh satellite photographs exposing the extent of the damage in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum.
Maxar Technologies captured the photographs on Thursday. They reveal an enormous crater in a field in the city's center location roughly 40 feet (12 meters) wide. A football field sits on one side of the crater, with the burned debris of a school on the other. A hospital across the street appears to have been partially demolished as well.
Russia Devastated Eastern Ukraine City
The city has been caught in the crossfire as Russia tries to link advances achieved in northern Ukraine's Kharkiv area with its stronghold in the country's far east. Even while ferocious fights for ground control raged inside Izyum, council deputy Max Strelnyk told CNN on Thursday that the city had been "totally devastated" by Russian planes and artillery.
In satellite photographs north of the school, a massive boiler facility and every surrounding residential structure look to be demolished. In this region of central Izyum, there don't appear to be any apparent military objectives.
A convoy of Russian self-propelled artillery is seen approaching toward Izyum around 3 miles (5 kilometers) northwest of the city. According to Strelnyk, Russian soldiers currently control the city sectors on the northern bank of the Seversky Donets River, which divides Izyum in two.
The city areas on the river's southern bank are under Ukrainian authority. Russian self-propelled artillery is also observed in a field three miles northeast of the city, and its turrets pointed at center Izyum.
According to a Russian army chief, the first phase of Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been declared "complete," but the operation's goals may be scaled back. Kremlin soldiers are changing their attention to totally "liberating" eastern Ukraine's Donbas area, Mirror reported.
On Friday, the country's defense ministry announced that it has "liberated" 93% of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic's territory and 54% of the Donetsk region, the two territories that make up the Donbass.
In a statement issued on Friday, Sergey Rudskoy, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff's major operations department, did not exclude invading Ukrainian towns that had been blockaded.
He also stated that Russia would retaliate instantly if NATO attempted to restrict the airspace above Ukraine, as Kyiv has requested, but NATO has refused. The Russian defense ministry stated on Friday that the operation would continue until Russian soldiers accomplish the objectives assigned to them but did not elaborate.
Zelensky Urges Ukrainians To Continue Resistance
"Every minute determines our fate, our future, whether we will live," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, urging Ukrainians to maintain their resistance to Russia's invading army. Ukrainians have maintained a defiant posture as Russian soldiers continue to assault them.
According to a Fox9 report, Ukraine has accused Russia of forcefully transporting hundreds of thousands of citizens to the country in order to use them as "hostages" to force a surrender. Russia, on the other hand, claimed that they were leaving of their own free will.
Russian forces are allegedly confiscating passports from Ukrainian residents and transporting them to "filtration camps" in Ukraine's separatist-controlled east before transferring them to different remote, economically impoverished places in Russia, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine's Ombudsperson, Lyudmyla Denisova, stated that 402,000 individuals, including 84,000 children, were relocated without their choice.
According to Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, 6,000 individuals were deported to Russia from the damaged port city of Mariupol, and 15,000 more people had their identity documents taken in a sector of Mariupol under Russian control.
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