Russian shelling in east Ukraine kills at least 15

Map of the front line in eastern Ukraine locating a deadly missing strike on a residential building in town of Chasiv Yar on Sunday.

Ukrainian rescuers were hoping Monday to find survivors under the rubble of an apartment building hit by a Russian missile strike which killed at least 15 people, as Moscow's forces seek to consolidate their control over the Donbas region. 

The building was partially destroyed by the strike, AFP correspondents saw at the scene, where dozens of rescuers were sifting through the rubble with a mechanical digger on Sunday.

"At least 30 others are under the rubble" of the four-storey building after it was hit by a Russian Uragan missile, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said earlier on Telegram.

"Everyone who gives orders for such strikes, everyone who carries them out targeting our ordinary cities, residential areas, kills absolutely deliberately," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address, vowing that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. 

"Yesterday, 11 or 10 o'clock in the evening, I was in the bedroom, and when I was leaving, everything started thundering and cracking...," she said.

Another woman who had ventured inside to see what she could salvage from her apartment retrieved a bluebird, still perched in its cage.

- Ground attacks paused -

But though the region was under persistent shelling, Russian ground attacks were all but paused, the Ukrainian army general staff said Sunday.

"The enemy in our operational zone keeps behind the lines of defense, does not advance by land, does not have the opportunities and capacities to create new strike groups," Operational Command South said early Monday. 

"The number of attacks and shelling has decreased, without their artillery the invaders are almost helpless," Sergiy Gaiday said. 

On Saturday, three people were killed and 23 wounded by shelling in Donetsk, governor Kyrylenko said.

"The Ukrainian army is holding on firmly, repelling attacks in various directions," said Zelensky. "But, of course, a lot still needs to be done so that Russian losses really cause such pause." 

Russian officials in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv meanwhile announced the start of the harvest "in the liberated territories of the region", Russian news agency RIA Novosti announced Sunday.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia's restriction on Ukrainian grain exports may have contributed to turmoil in Sri Lanka triggered by severe shortages of food and fuel.

Renewing a demand that he has made repeatedly, Blinken called on Russia to let an estimated 20 million tonnes of grain leave Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February.

Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the German newspaper has published content in Russian.

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