Five civilians were killed and another 13 were injured in the last day as a result of Russian shelling in the south and east of Ukraine, The Guardian reports with reference to the Associated Press.

Russian troops continued their offensive on the city of Bakhmut, attacking every day, despite heavy losses, declared the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrilenko.

“These attacks can best be called cannon fodder. They mainly rely on infantry, less on armored vehicles, and they cannot advance,” Kyrylenko told a Ukrainian TV channel.

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, regional governor Serhii Gaidai said that the Ukrainian army is directing its counteroffensive to Kreminna and Svatove.

In the south, the governor of the Kherson region, Yaroslav Yanishevich, said that eight civilians were wounded in the past day as a result of Russian shelling.

As a result of shelling, a morgue and a children’s hospital in the city of Kherson, recently recaptured by the Ukrainian army, were damaged.

In the neighboring Zaporizhzhya region, Russian troops bombed Nikopol and Chervonogrigorivka, across the Dnieper from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which had been occupied by Moscow since the beginning of the war.

Russian shelling damaged residential buildings and power lines, the governor of the Zaporizhia region Valentyn Reznichenko reported.

In the north-east of Ukraine, in the Kharkiv region, as a result of Russian shelling, three civilians were injured, one of them later died, Governor Oleg Synegubov said.

In September, after the so-called referendums, Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions: Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk. Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a speech announcing the annexation of the regions, said that they would “forever” be part of the Russian Federation.