Russian forces struck the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, the hometown of Kyiv’s Eurovision entry, as the war-torn country’s musical act took to the competition stage in the U.K. on Saturday night.
Two civilians were hospitalized after strikes on warehouses in Ternopil, the head of the area’s regional government, Volodymyr Trush, wrote on Telegram on Saturday. They had suffered “burns and shrapnel wounds,” Ternopil Mayor Serhiy Nadal added on social media.
“Ternopil is the name of our hometown, which was bombed by Russia while we sang on the Eurovision stage,” musical duo Tvorchi, who represented Ukraine in this year’s song contest, wrote on Instagram on Saturday night. In a post to Twitter, with a photo showing her alongside the act’s members, Andrii Hutsuliak and Jeffery Kenny, the U.K. ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, said the two members of Tvorchi “performed minutes after their university home town had been bombed.”
Both Ternopil and the area around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, were “attacked” during the live broadcast of the Eurovision final, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry wrote on Twitter.
Russia has repeatedly launched overnight barrages of missile and drone attacks on targets in Ukraine, including on the country’s major cities. Saturday’s reports coincided with Tvorchi’s display of Ukrainian flags as they performed in northern England, and as Russia waits for a long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive to get underway.
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Ruslan Kravchenko, the governor of the Kyiv region, said on Sunday that two air alarms for drone attacks were triggered in the region of the capital overnight, although Kyiv was not targeted during the second alarm.
In an update posted on Sunday morning, Trush said a second wave of strikes was recorded at around 5 a.m. local time in the Ternopil region. Cruise missiles destroyed two houses and damaged a dozen more, according to the official.
On Sunday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Moscow had “launched yet another massive strike on Ukraine,” with the use of Iranian-made Shahed drones.
Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 18 drones used by Russian forces overnight, the General Staff wrote on Facebook. More than 30 civilians were wounded, the military said, and around 50 buildings were “damaged by blast waves.”
A total of four missile attacks were registered on Saturday, including on Ternopil and the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the General Staff continued in an operational update. Three cruise missiles were destroyed by air defenses, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
The head of the southern Kherson region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, also said on social media on Sunday that 90 shelling attacks were registered in the region over the previous 24-hour period, including on the city of Kherson. Six people were injured, he said.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.