Russian army ordered to ‘intensify’ shock and awe attacks in Ukraine

Russian troops have been accused of deploying terror tactics by striking civilian targets (Picture: Reuters)

Vladimir Putin’s defence minister has ordered the Russian army to ‘intensify’ its shock and awe attacks in Ukraine.

Sergei Shoigu was filmed carrying out an on-the-ground inspection of the war effort, visiting commanders and handing out medals.

The Ministry of Defence said in a statement: ‘The head of the Russian military department gave the necessary instructions to further intensify actions in all operational areas.’

It added the move is necessary to ‘exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime inflicting massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of the Donbas and other regions’.

Firefighters together with rescuers, military and the police work at the site of the Russian missile strike in downtown Vinnytsia (Picture: EPA)

People stand near a crater left by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro (Picture: Reuters)

A shop of household and construction goods is destroyed (Picture: Future Publishing via Getty)

eople walking near the Russian bomb crater in Myru square in Kramatorsk on July 16 (Picture: Vincenzo Circosta/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock)

Long-range Kalibr cruise missiles launched by a Russian military ship from an unknown location (Picture: AP)

Putin has made the capture of Donbas central to his invasion of Ukraine.

The seizure of the town of Lysychansk at the beginning of July secured the Kremlin’s control over the Luhansk region, which comprises half the south-eastern region.

It was unclear whether the Shoigu’s talks with military chiefs were in Russia or occupied Ukraine.

This ominous threat to Ukraine came as more details emerged of the tragic victims of this week’s sickening Russian strike on city Vinnytsia, where the death toll no stands at 24.

Pictures showed a seven-year-old boy whose remains could only be recognised from his DNA after he was hit by a missile while attending a doctor’s appointment.

Maxim Zharyi died with his mother Victoria Rekuta, 35, a qualified dentist, hundreds of miles from the frontline.

The pair had been to the Neuromed clinic which was struck by a missile fired from a Russian warship in the Black Sea.

Ksenia Denisyuk, Victoria’s friend, said of Maxim: ‘He was a wonder child, bright and kind.

‘Together they went to a clinic. This was the moment when the terrorist country [Russia] hit the medical centre.

‘Maxim could be identified only with a DNA test. The whole world should know that Russia is a terrorist state.’

Another boy, eight-year-old Kirill Pyakhin, died in the rocket strike as he waited in a parked car with his uncle while his grandmother went to get cash from a nearby bank.

This was the same attack in which little Liza Dmitrieva, four, was killed in her pushchair and her mother Irina, 33, left gravely wounded.

Alina Kisel, 35, was also killed by a tree which was blown over. She was in the backyard of the bank where she worked and ‘died instantly’. Four other bank workers were hospitalised.

Shoigu presented the Gold Star Hero of the Russia medals to Colonel-General Alexander Lapin and Major-General Esedulla Abachev.

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