Police in the northeastern city of Kharkiv said cluster bombs hit the Barabashovo market, where Associated Press reporters saw a woman crying over the body of her dead husband. Local officials said the shelling also hit a bus stop, a gym and a residential building. The bombing came after Russia on Wednesday reiterated its plans to seize territory beyond eastern Ukraine, where the Russian military has spent months trying to capture the Donbass region, which lies south of Kharkiv. It also followed Ukrainian attacks this week on a bridge used by the Russians to supply their forces in occupied territories near Ukraine’s southern Black Sea coast. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attacks early Thursday targeted one of the most populous areas of the city, which had a population of about 1.4 million before the war. “The Russian army is randomly bombing Kharkiv, peaceful residential areas. Civilians are being killed,” Terehoff said. In the market, Sabina Pogorelets’ desperate screams pierced the air as she begged Ukrainian police to let her hug her husband, Adam, a vendor whose body lay partially covered by a cloth next to a small stall. A bloody wound was visible on his head as officers gently pulled his wife away so medics could take his body. “Please! I have to hold his hand!” Pogorelets cried. Nearby, a man hugged his young daughter as he and other visitors stood in shock. Emergency crews treated at least two of the injured in nearby ambulances. “People started working slowly, they came out to sell things and residents came here to buy things,” said Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the National Police in the Kharkiv region. “And that very place was hit by Uragan missiles with cluster bombs to maximize human damage.” The claim of cluster bombs could not be independently confirmed. AP reporters at the scene saw burned cars and a bus riddled with shrapnel. Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said four people were in serious condition and a child was among those injured in the shelling. Russian forces also bombed wheat fields, setting them on fire, he said. Elsewhere, Russian forces shelled the southern city of Mykolaiv overnight as well as the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka, where two schools were destroyed, Ukrainian officials said. A man’s body has been pulled from the rubble of the school in Kramatorsk, and emergency officials say two more people are feared trapped there. The scattered attacks illustrate broader war aims beyond Russia’s previously declared focus on the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces of the Donbass region, which pro-Moscow separatists have partially controlled since 2014. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies on Wednesday that Russia plans to maintain control over more territory, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in southern Ukraine. Moscow also envisions making gains elsewhere, Lavrov said. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the Russian offensive on Donetsk was likely to stop before it reached the cities of Sloviansk and Bakhmut. “Russian troops are now struggling to move in relatively sparsely populated and open terrain. They will encounter terrain much more favorable to the Ukrainian defenders,” their assessment said. Richard Moore, head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency, took a similar view, saying the Russians were “going to run out of steam” in Ukraine. “They will have to be stopped somehow and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to fight back,” Moore said. He said it was important for Ukraine to demonstrate its ability to respond militarily to Russia, both to maintain morale and as “an important reminder to the rest of Europe that this is a win-win campaign by the Ukrainians because we are going to move into a very difficult winter.” Ukraine’s military said Thursday that Russian forces attempted to storm the Vuhlehirska power plant in the Donetsk region, but said “Ukrainian defenders made the enemy flee.” In other developments on Thursday: — The operator of a major pipeline from Russia to Europe says natural gas has started flowing again after a 10-day shutdown for maintenance. But natural gas flow was too low at full capacity and the outlook was uncertain. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany had been closed since July 11 for annual maintenance. The pipeline is Germany’s main source of Russian gas. German officials feared the pipeline might not reopen at all amid rising tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine. — Turkish officials said an agreement would be signed Friday in Istanbul on a U.N. plan to unfreeze Ukrainian grain exports and allow Russia to export grain and fertilizer. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office announced that he, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and officials from Russia and Ukraine would oversee the signing ceremony. Guterres is working on a plan to enable the export of millions of tons of grain stocks stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports because of the war. The move could ease a global food crisis that has sent wheat and other grain prices skyrocketing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment. — Ukraine’s nuclear power plant operator says Russian forces have planted explosives and weapons in parts of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant where they pose a significant risk. Energoatom said the heavy weapons and explosives were in the building that houses one of the six reactors at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. “They continue to cynically violate absolutely all fire, nuclear and radiological safety rules and requirements,” the statement said. — Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Moscow would consider boosting gas supplies to Hungary following a formal request from Budapest. He spoke after a meeting in Moscow with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijártó. Russian news agencies report that Szijjártó sought to get an additional 700 million cubic meters of natural gas from Russia this year. — Russia has banned 39 representatives of Australian security services and defense companies from entering the country in response to sanctions imposed by Canberra earlier this year.
This story corrects the Study of War’s assessment that Russian forces were unlikely to reach Sloviansk and Bakhmut, not that they could.
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