First, the beginnings of Reuters and Associated Press reports made available after 8 a.m. EDT, both linked to the news services’ other stories related to the war in Ukraine. — MCM
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Russia hits targets across Ukraine, fighters cling on in Mariupol, by Oleksandr Kozhukhar and Pavel Polityuk | Reuters * Russia says it hit targets with missiles, artillery * Authorities in Lviv say attack kills seven * Ukrainian fighters hold out in parts of Mariupol | LVIV/KYIV — Russia said today it had hit hundreds of military targets in Ukraine overnight, destroying command posts with air-launched missiles, while authorities in the western city of Lviv, which had escaped heavy bombardment, said a missile attack killed seven. The Russian defence ministry said in a statement it had destroyed 16 Ukrainian military facilities in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions and in the port of Mykolayiv, in the south and east of the country. It added that the Russian air force had launched strikes against 108 areas where Ukrainian forces were concentrated and Russian artillery struck 315 Ukrainian military targets overnight. READ MORE . . .
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Ukrainian officials: Russian strikes kill at least 7 in Lviv, by Yuras Karmanau | The Associated Press LVIV — Russian missiles hit the western Ukrainian city of Lviv today, killing at least seven people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow’s troops stepped up strikes on infrastructure in preparation for an all-out assault on the east. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city after a series of explosions shattered windows and started fires. Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine have seen only sporadic strikes during almost two months of war and have become a relative safe haven for people from parts of the country where fighting has been more intense. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, meanwhile, vowed to “fight absolutely to the end” in strategically vital Mariupol, where the last known pocket of resistance in a seven-week siege . . . READ MORE . . .
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TO BE CONTINUED