Lysizansk, in the Lugansk region, fell to Russian forces in the summer of 2022 after a violent battle.
The front in eastern Ukraine hasn't moved in months, but the fighting remains bloody and bombing on both sides has intensified this winter.
“In Lysychansk, employees of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry found the bodies of 20 people under the rubble,” the ministry wrote in a Telegram message.
The same source released a video of rescuers working in the dark to pull a body from the rubble before finding the injured woman being carried away on a stretcher.
The ministry said it planned to continue the search “throughout the night” and that so far “10 people have been rescued” from the rubble.
Leonid Pashenik, the Russian-installed governor of Lugansk, accused Kiev's forces of targeting a busy bakery, which he said was used to buy fresh bread on weekends.
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According to pro-Russian officials, one person was hospitalized in the city of Lugansk in “serious condition”.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti released a video of a damaged building, where rescue workers are seen pulling a completely crushed car out of the rubble.
A one-story building bearing a large sign with the name “Adriatic Restaurant” was completely destroyed and reduced to rubble.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Western weapons were used in the bombing and said it hoped the attack would receive “swift and unconditional condemnation” from international bodies.
Located 15 km from Ukrainian-controlled territory, Lysizansk had a population of 111,000 before the Russian offensive began.
Russian forces took control of it in the summer of 2022, as did its twin city of Severodonetsk in one of the fiercest battles since the offensive began in February 2022.
The drones were shot down
On the Ukrainian side, the air force said on Saturday that it had shot down nine of 14 drones launched by Russia over southern and central Ukraine between Friday and Saturday night.
“Ukraine destroyed nine enemy drones in the Dnipro, Odessa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr regions,” the Kyiv Air Force said.
Most of the Iranian-made Shahed drones targeted “energy infrastructure” in the central Dnipro region, where thousands of people are without electricity, according to the same source.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's home town of Khryvyi Rik was cut off.
The governor of Dnipro region, Serguy Lyzak, said 15,000 residents of the Krivi Rik region were left without electricity after the drone strike.
Since launching its offensive in Ukraine, Russia has targeted the country's energy infrastructure, leaving thousands without heat during an intense campaign last year.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his troops for attacking Moscow's forces “on land and at sea” far from the battlefield.
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The report comes two days after Kiev announced it had destroyed a Russian warship off the coast of Crimea, and on Saturday a fire broke out at a major refinery in the Volgograd region of southwestern Russia, claimed by Ukraine.
“Following the fall of the downed drone, a fire broke out at the Volgograd refinery,” local governor Andrey Potsarov said in a telegram, with no casualties.
In the early morning, emergency services, cited by TASS, confirmed that the fire had been extinguished.
The fire at the refinery in Volgograd was “the result of a successful drone strike by the SBU,” the Ukrainian Defense Services, a Ukrainian security source, told AFP.
Owned by giant Lukoil, the refinery claims on its website that it is “the largest producer of petroleum products in the Southern Federal District,” which unites eight oblasts in southwestern Russia.
Since the offensive against Kyiv began in February 2022, Russian territory has been regularly targeted by strikes and drone strikes.
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