Five Ukrainian civilians were killed on February 5 when Russian forces shelled the southern city of Kherson and the northeastern region of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said, amid a dramatic increase of the intensity of Moscow's bombardment of civilian areas.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram that Russian artillery killed four people and wounded one other person in Kherson city in a strike that occurred around noon. Russian troops also shelled the city of Vorozhba in the Sumy region, killing one person and injuring two others, the regional military administration reported.
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Ukrainian forces in November 2022 liberated Kherson as Russian troops retreated eastward across the Dnieper River. Since then, Russian forces have regularly targeted the city with artillery and missiles from across the river, causing numerous deaths among civilians and destroying infrastructure.
In a separate Telegram message, Klymenko said that over the past week, the intensity of Russia's shelling of southern Ukraine increased by almost a quarter compared to previous weeks, causing at least a dozen civilian deaths. Klimenko added that Russian forces attacked civilian areas more than 1,500 times over the past seven days.
"Attacks have been recorded on more than 570 settlements, with the largest number in the Zaporizhzhya region," Klymenko wrote. "As a result of the Russian strikes over the past week, 12 people died and 60 people were wounded."
Eight explosions were recorded in the attack on Vorozhba.
"As a result of the shelling, a 40-year-old man died [and] his mother was injured. Another person was also injured. According to preliminary information, five residential buildings, commercial buildings, electrical networks, and Internet connections were damaged," the military administration said in a statement.
Emergency services were working at the scene, the statement said, calling on residents of border communities "not to expose themselves to danger and to take advantage of offers to evacuate to safer communities and regions."
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces fought 105 combat clashes at the front on February 5, the General Staff said in its evening summary. More than one-third of the clashes occurred in the area around Avdiyivka and nearby towns in the Donetsk region. Russian forces supported by aviation were repelled when they tried to break through Ukrainian defenses, the General Staff said.
Russian forces also attacked in areas around Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Maryinsk, and Zaporizhzhya, and tried to knock Ukrainian troops from the bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson region, the General Staff said.
Russian forces also launched more than 30 missile and air strikes and 52 attacks from rocket salvo systems on the positions of Ukrainian troops and populated areas.
Separately, Oleh Synyehubov, the governor of the eastern region of Kharkiv, said early on February 5 that 18 settlements in the region had been struck by Russian shells over the past 24 hours and that in total about 18 settlements in the Kharkiv region were hit by enemy artillery and mortar fire during the day.
Nearly two years into Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine, the battlefield along the nearly 1,200-kilometer front line stretching from northeast Ukraine to Kherson has largely frozen, with Russia pushing forward in localized offensives near Kupyansk in the north, and around Avdiyivka to the south.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on February 5 visited a hospital in the city of Kropyvnytskiy where injured Ukrainian troops are receiving treatment.
"I spoke with the warriors and presented them with awards," Zelenskiy said on X, formerly Twitter. "I thank each of them for their service. They are doing an excellent job and are true heroes. Ukraine takes pride in them."