“Yesterday, enemy artillery targeted a military unit. Rescuers and volunteers have been working to recover the bodies from the rubble. Many have died. Currently, places are being prepared in the cemetery for about 70 dead Ukrainian soldiers,” Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the head of the Sumy region's state administration wrote on Facebook.

“The enemy also gets what he deserves,” he said, adding that there were a lot of Russian bodies in the city.

The casualty figures could not independently be confirmed by independent sources.

Okhtyrka, a small city in Sumy Oblast in Ukraine, is located between Kharkiv and Kyiv. (ILKHA)