Dnipro, Ukraine — Russian missiles and drones once again targeted cities in Ukraine overnight, with at least 10 people killed and dozens injured in an attack on the central city of Kryvvi Rih — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's hometown — according to its mayor. Ukraine accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilians to distract from the gains being made by Ukrainian forces as they push a counteroffensive on the front lines.
Russian missiles and drones rained down on the town, with one rocket hitting an apartment building as people slept. Firefighters battled the blaze into Tuesday morning, but the work soon turned to the grim task of searching for the missing and the dead.
"The first bang woke me up and I went straight to my balcony," said resident Ihor Avrenenko, 60. "The second explosion roared over my head as hot debris fell, and I saw the building on fire."
The latest aerial attack came as Ukraine's counteroffensive slowly pushed forward. Ukrainian troops are fighting fiercely to recover occupied ground inch by inch, meticulously clearing small towns and villages as they push toward the Russian forces entrenched further south and east. So far, Ukrainian officials say they've recaptured at least seven settlements.
But the gains, so far steady but modest, come at a cost in both lives and hardware. Ukraine hasn't released new casualty figures, but Russia has destroyed, and claims to have captured, Western-supplied equipment including German Leopard tanks and American Bradley armored fighting vehicles.
Civilians are also paying a heavy toll.
Askold and Tetiana fled from their home in Soledar, not far from the obliterated front-line city of Bakhmut. Their apartment is now a burnt-out shell of the home they knew.
"We have no home," Tetiana told CBS News through tears. "Who knows where we'll live... on the street?"
Tears aren't in short supply in eastern Ukraine. The couple still has family members missing.
"We don't know where they are," she told us. "We pray we'll find them, and also that we'll find some place to live in peace."
Ukraine continues asking the U.S. and its other Western partners for more heavy weapons to keep its counteroffensive going, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Tuesday a new $325 million military aid package, drawing on existing U.S. supplies, which will include more Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Stryker armored personnel carriers, in addition to ammunition and artillery rounds.
Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News Streaming Network. Lee, who joined CBS News in March 2019, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism's top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors' Tom Renner award.
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