At least one civilian was killed and a 9-year-old child was injured during Russian bombardment of the Donetsk regional town of Bakhmut (formerly Artemivsk) on May 17.
The State Emergency Service and regional military administration head, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said that a school and several infrastructure facilities were damaged, including a five-story residential building.
“Russians are extensively shelling the entire front line, from Vuhledar to Bakhmut,” Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram, posting a video and photographs of the damage caused by Russian troops.
Russia has indiscriminately shelled and bombed civilian targets throughout Ukraine ever since re-invading the country on Feb. 24. Whole cities and towns have been reduced to rubble.
Bakhmut, a district capital of about 100,000 people in the Donetsk region, was temporarily occupied by invading Russian forces in 2014 but then liberated the same year.
Residents of Bakhmut in August 2015 voted to return the city’s historical name following a series of public hearings to enforce a “de-communization” law that went into effect in May of that year.
“In 1924 its name was changed to Artemvisk – after the name of Artem, the nom de guerre of Russian revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev who headed the province’s executive committee,” the Kyiv Post earlier reported.
The city was founded as Bakhmut in 1571 as a kozak outpost and was named after the river tributary of Bakhmutska.
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Russia’s goal to subjugate Ukraine includes seizing the two easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that constitute the Donbas territories.
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