MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — A day after Ukrainian forces pushed them back beyond the city limits, Russian troops unleashed a ferocious artillery attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Monday, hitting residential neighborhoods with rockets and sending streams of people fleeing.
At about 5 a.m., the city awoke to an artillery barrage that lit up the dark sky. Residents took shelter in basements and truckloads of Ukrainian troops rushed to the east of the city, where the fighting appeared to be heaviest.
Several rockets landed in a neighborhood of dense apartment blocks in the far east of the city, blowing out windows and sending shrapnel through walls and home appliances. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
But residents were both shaken and spiteful, invoking the name of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, with a torrent of profanity.
“Tell Putin that he is killing peaceful people,” Olga Kololyova, 48,…
“He thinks that we are to submit to him?” she said. “I want him to go through what I went through this morning.”
