Russian strikes pound Ukraine on eve of new EU sanctions

ZAPORIZHZHIA: Russian forces pounded targets in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday (May 3), unleashing rockets on a steel plant that is Ukraine's last redoubt in the port city of Mariupol as the European Union prepared to slap oil sanctions on Moscow.

Scores of evacuees who did manage to leave the city under United Nations and Red Cross auspices over the weekend after cowering for weeks under the Azovstal plant reached the relative safety of Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia.

Fresh Russian attacks in the Donetsk region killed 21 civilians and injured 27, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. He said the figure was the highest daily death toll in the region since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk last month that killed more than 50 people.

Attacks and shelling also intensified in Luhansk, with the most difficult area being Popasna, where it was impossible to organise evacuations, regional governor Serhiy Haida said.

"There are no safe cities in Luhansk region," he said on Telegram.

Russia's defense ministry said its forces had struck a military airfield near the Black Sea port of Odesa with missiles destroying drones, missiles and ammunition supplied to Ukraine by the United States and its European allies. Ukraine said three missiles targeted the Odesa region and all were intercepted.

Russia has turned its heaviest firepower on Ukraine's east and south after failing to take Kyiv, the capital, as it seeks to take control in the eastern Donbas region and limit Ukraine's access to the Black Sea, vital for its grain and metal exports.

Pummelled by Western sanctions, Russia now faces new measures from the EU that would target its oil industry and banks. The proposed new sanctions were expected to be detailed on Wednesday.

Moscow showed no signs of pulling back, nearly 10 weeks into a war that has killed thousands, destroyed cities and driven 5 million Ukrainians to flee abroad. Russia's own US$1.8 trillion economy is heading for its biggest contraction since the years following the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

"The Russia military reacted today with great anger to our successes," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address. "The sheer scale of today's shelling clearly does not indicate that Russia has any special sort of specific military aim."

Andriy Sadoviy, the mayor of Lviv, a western city near the Polish border, said late on Tuesday that air strikes had damaged electricity and water networks, cutting off power in some districts and causing considerable damage to property.

Olesksandr Kamyshin, head of Ukrainian railways, said Russian forces struck six stations in the center and west of the country. There were no injuries among rail workers or passengers, he said on Twitter.