A CNN team on the ground heard explosions from the strikes and saw fires that broke out in the bombings. Residents interviewed by CNN also said it was the heaviest shelling in the city since the war began.
At least one person was killed and two wounded in the attack, according to Vitaly Kim, head of the Mykolayiv regional military command. In a speech to mark Russia’s Navy Day in St Petersburg, Putin made no mention of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but said his country’s “current situation requires very decisive actions”. “We will provide protection steadily and by all means. The key here is the capabilities of the Navy, which is able to respond with lightning speed to anyone who decides to encroach on our sovereignty and freedom,” Putin said. Putin said delivery of the country’s supersonic Zircon cruise missile systems would begin in the coming months. Russia said in May that it successfully test-fired the Zircon missile at a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

War crimes charges

Separately, at least three people were killed and eight wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine, according to Donetsk’s military-civilian administration, which said villages in the region were targeted by artillery, Russian Grad missiles and Uragan rockets. “11 private residential buildings and a multi-storey building, a police station, a market, a canteen were damaged and three fields were burnt,” the administration said. The General Staff of Ukraine said that Russian forces are attacking the front lines in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday called on the remaining residents of the Donetsk region to leave urgently in what he called a “government decision”. “Everything is being organized. Full support, full assistance — both logistics and payments,” he said in his late-night address. “We only need a decision from the people themselves, who have not yet made it for themselves.” A prison strike in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine on Friday left at least 40 inmates dead. Olenivka prison near Donetsk has been used to house many of the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol several months ago. UK Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons said the strike was part of a pattern of “the worst kind of human rights abuses” on Twitter on Saturday. “Olenivka needs an investigation. It looks like part of an increasingly disturbing pattern of the worst kind of human rights abuses and possible war crimes being committed in occupied Eastern Ukraine with impunity,” the ambassador tweeted. Zelensky said the attack was a “deliberate war crime by the Russians”. Ukrainian intelligence services said the strikes were carried out by the Russian mercenary group Wagner and were not coordinated with the Russian Defense Ministry. CNN cannot independently verify the allegations of Ukrainian military intelligence. Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack.