A look at some of the fighting from around Ukraine on Saturday

News Desk March 27, 2022 in EUROPE, UKRAINE WAR, WORLD Tagged Russia, Ukraine, War - 4 Minutes

Missiles hit the western city of Lviv and Ukrainian counterattacks retook several villages from Russian forces on Saturday, according to local officials.

Here are some of the developments on the ground as of Saturday:

Lviv: The western city and cultural hub was hit by a series of airstrikes, with air raid sirens going on and off throughout the day. Three powerful blasts were heard in the center of the city, and plumes of thick black smoke could be seen rising in the distance. The missiles struck a fuel storage facility and a military infrastructure site, injuring at least five people. No deaths have been reported so far. Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi called for air defense of Ukraine after the strikes.

Kyiv: The city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko canceled an extended curfew planned for the capital. In a statement on Telegram, Klitschko said the curfew — planned to begin Saturday at 8:00 p.m. local time and run until 7:00 a.m. on Monday — would not be introduced.

Suburbs in west and east of Kyiv: The Kyiv region’s military administration said Saturday that suburbs to the west and east of the capital had come under Russian shellfire and in some districts Russian forces were digging in. The western suburbs of Маkariv, Bucha and Irpin were being shelled, and the community of Bilohorodka had come under rocket attack and missile strikes, according to Oleksandr Pavliuk, the head of the Kyiv regional military administration. Pavliuk added that Russian forces were attempting to fortify positions in Bucha and another western suburb, Nemishaeve.

Slavutych, north of Kyiv: Russian troops entered the city of Slavutych after several days of shelling, a move that sparked protests among hundreds of Ukrainian civilians. The city was built to house workers of the nearby Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it was monitoring the situation.

Kharkiv: Ukrainian forces have staged a counteroffensive in areas around Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv, local officials said. A counterattack that began on Friday to the east of Kharkiv led to the recapture of several villages, according to the regional administrator Oleg Synegubov. He said a number of villages around Malaya Rogan were retaken by Ukrainian forces. The villages are roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) from central Kharkiv, which has been nearly encircled by Russian forces since the early weeks of the invasion.

Ukrainian counterattacks: The success of Ukrainian forces around Kharkiv has been mirrored further north, near the city of Sumy, where Ukrainian troops have liberated a number of settlements, according to videos geolocated and verified by CNN. A separate counterattack in the south also led to the liberation of two villages from Russian forces northwest of Mariupol, according to the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration. And Ukrainian counterattacks north and west of the capital appeared to have made some headway earlier this week, with Ukrainian forces restoring control of the town of Makariv, some 40 miles west of Kyiv.

Chernihiv: The mayor of the northern city said Chernihiv is surrounded by Russian troops. There is no stable electricity supply, and water is delivered by volunteers as the water supply hasn’t been fully restored. “The enemy consciously destroyed the only bridge connecting Chernihiv with a southern highway towards Kyiv,” Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko said. “There are currently no humanitarian corridors or any safe way to bring or supplies, aid or wounded in or out.” He said the population has more than halved since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.