Russian shelling hit a hospital in the city of Bilopillia, killing one teenager, Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday.

The city, five miles from the Russian border, is located in the Sumy province, between Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv.

“In the last day alone, Russian terrorists have carried out 158 artillery and 28 mortar attacks on Sumy [province],” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, said on the messaging app Telegram.

“As a result of these shellings, private houses, power lines, granaries, agricultural machinery, private cars and administrative buildings were damaged,” Tymoshenko added.

Russian forces pulled back from the Sumy region in March during their retreat from much of northern Ukraine, but the region hasn’t been spared from Russia’s ongoing bombardment campaign against civilian infrastructure.

That campaign has wrought severe damage on Ukraine’s electrical grid, leaving much of the country without reliable electrical power as winter weather approaches.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the uncertainty in his nightly address Wednesday.

“As of this evening, about 6 million subscribers in most regions of our country and in Kyiv are disconnected from electricity,” he said.

“The situation remains very difficult in the capital, as well as in the Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Odesa, Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy regions.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken blasted the Russian assaults on Wednesday, saying the Kremlin intends to “freeze and starve” Ukrainians.

“Heat. Water. Electricity. For children, for the elderly, for the sick. These are President (Vladimir) Putin’s new targets. He’s hitting them hard,” he said, following a meeting with NATO allies in Bucharest, Romania.

Dmytro Kuleba, Kyiv’s foreign minister, was in Bucharest as well.

“The best way to help the Ukrainian energy system is to provide both spare parts to restore [the] energy system and air defense systems and ammunition to defend Ukraine’s energy system from further missile terror conducted by Russia,” Kuleba said.

With Post wires

In a security breach with potentially deadly consequences, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted the personal information of more than 6,252 immigrants who came to the U.S. to flee persecution from countries including Iran, Russia and China, according to a Wednesday report.

The information included birthdays, nationalities, case numbers and detention locations — all posted publicly on the ICE website Monday.

If the information falls into the wrong hands, those whose details were posted could be in danger of retaliation from the governments they had fled from, the Los Angeles Times warned.

All of the people listed are currently in ICE custody, but their information is meant to be confidential while their cases are being decided.

Typically when asylum seekers are detained by ICE it is for a period of a few days while their claim is evaluated. If the person is deemed to have a valid reason for asylum they will be allowed to stay in the US while it is processed; if not they are sent back to their home country.

An ICE official told the LA Times the agency is concerned about the data posted, which was done by mistake during a website update. The agency is asking those who downloaded the information to delete it.

Federal regulation disallows the release of such personal information without approval from high-up Department of Homeland Security officials, the paper said.

“Though unintentional, this release of information is a breach of policy and the agency is investigating the incident and taking all corrective actions necessary,” an ICE spokesperson told the paper.

The breach was discovered by an immigrant advocacy group, which then alerted ICE about their mistake. The info was up for about five hours, the LA Times said. 

“We are deeply concerned about our client’s safety after ICE publicly shared this very sensitive information about her and thousands of others like her,” managing attorney of the National Immigrant Justice Center Diana Rashid said after discovering one of her clients was on the list. 

“She is seeking protection from removal because she fears persecution if returned to her country of origin. Revealing this information makes her more vulnerable to the persecution and abuses she fears if deported.”

ICE said it will notify affected immigrants of the data breach and will not deport anyone while it evaluates if the leaked data affects their cases.

A group of House Republicans is probing the Navy after uncovering evidence that the US Naval Academy (USNA) is keeping midshipmen from graduating if they sought religious accommodations to the Pentagon’s COVID vaccine mandate.

In a letter to Naval Vice Adm. Sean Buck Tuesday, lawmakers led by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., said denying diplomas to otherwise qualified midshipmen is a waste of the country’s four-year investment in those people and will hurt military readiness at a time when all service branches are having trouble with recruitment and retention.

“Commandant of Midshipmen and their Judge Advocate General Officer (JAG) are denying Midshipmen from graduating due to their refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds and are held as a delayed graduate until the injunction preventing the separation of Naval personnel is lifted,” the lawmakers charged.

A preliminary injunction issued by a district court in early 2022 delayed the ability of the Navy to separate unvaccinated service members seeking religious accommodations. The case, which is now a class-action lawsuit, is still in the courts.

The lawmakers said a constituent who is a current USNA student reported to them that they were denied a diploma after their religious accommodation request was rejected.

“We’re seeing massive people being kicked out of academies and kicked out of their military service, all for the reason of refusing the vaccine [for] religious exemptions. One, it’s completely un-American. And two, it is not the best for the safety and security of the American people,” Steube told Fox News Digital.

He noted that the USNA student’s inability to receive a diploma has set them “back significantly” as credits do not easily transfer from the academy to other colleges. Additionally, they put in four full years of time and effort, on the taxpayer dime, to no benefit of the US.

Steube also said that the vaccine mandate “absolutely” is impacting readiness and recruitment.

“And it is no coincidence that as they’ve made all of these atrocious decisions that individuals are not going to sign up,” said the congressman, who said one Air Force Academy applicant in his district pulled out due to the “woke” policies in the military that he disagreed with.

“[The military is] losing good candidates for the academies, and they’re losing good Americans who want to serve their country simply because they’re pushing wokeness and pronouns and transgenderism into our military, and they’re pushing vaccine mandates onto our military, which is affecting the safety and security of the American people,” continued Steube, who noted that he will not vote for the annual National Defense Authorization Act if it promotes a vaccine mandate or woke policies.

A spokesperson for the Navy told Fox News Digital in a statement on Tuesday, “We are aware of the letter sent this afternoon by Congressman W. Gregory Steube and other Members of Congress, we are working on a formal response.”

The Navy did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for data on how many midshipmen seeking religious accommodation to the mandate have been denied diplomas.

President Biden said in September that the pandemic is “over,” causing advocates on behalf of service members to question the Pentagon’s ongoing strict vaccine mandate.

Troop recruitment and retainment has suffered in part due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which is worrying lawmakers about the fighting “readiness” of the military.

“Denying diplomas to otherwise qualified midshipmen based solely on COVID-19 vaccination status would not only be a waste of our country’s four-year investment in midshipmen who are eager to serve our nation, but [it] could disrupt military readiness in a year that every branch had trouble recruiting,” Steube told Fox News Digital.

“The US Naval Academy must provide full transparency of their process to deny diplomas due to the absurd COVID-19 vaccination mandate, including details of cases where midshipmen’s religious exemption requests were also denied,” he said.

The Navy also did not address Fox News Digital’s inquiry regarding how the denial of diplomas is affecting overall military readiness.

The letter comes after the Coast Guard Academy unenrolled seven cadets for failing to comply with the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate after their requests for religious exemptions were denied. Those cadets were ordered to leave campus.

The Pentagon’s watchdog said in September that the Department of Defense is in “potential noncompliance” with standards for reviewing and denying religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

A young woman and her mate launched a revenge attack on her ex-boyfriend.

Lolita Hogan, 20, pleaded guilty to affray after setting upon her friend’s former partner outside Westfield in Geelong.

The ex-girlfriend charged at the man and punched him in the back of the head in front of shocked shoppers outside the store in February 2020, the Geelong Advertiser reported.

Hogan then rushed in and punched him too, Geelong Magistrates’ Court heard.

She also punched another woman in the head after she tried to tear her away from the victim.

Both Hogan and the ex-girlfriend then grabbed the woman’s head and swung her into a wall, the court was told.

Hogan later told police she attacked the man because she was “upset about what he did” to her friend when they were a couple.

She said she attacked the woman who tried to stop her because she was “a f—ing b—h too”.

Hogan avoided a conviction and was handed a six-month good behavior bond.

WASHINGTON – The US has accused Beijing of providing Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines of questionable efficacy to foreign nations “for strategic political purposes” — often demanding concessions such as cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan in exchange.

Despite being ground zero for the outbreak, China capitalized on the pandemic to bend other countries to its will and build much-needed overseas ties, according to a Pentagon report published Tuesday.

“Beijing seized the opportunity to use COVID-19 as a propaganda tool against the West, sought to deflect culpability for the global pandemic and attempted to capitalize on its domestic success in containing the virus and providing foreign health assistance,” read the Defense Department’s China Military Power report for 2022.

China – whose closest links are with rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Russia – lacks the international support defense experts say is needed to supplant the US as global superpower. The Pentagon regularly points to America’s strong alliances and relationships with foreign nations as a key strength of US national security.

“[China’s] foreign policy seeks to build a ‘community of common destiny’ that supports its strategy to realize ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,’ [which is] Beijing’s revisionist ambition for the international order,” the report said.

China’s humanitarian efforts often came with political or economic strings attached.

“For example, the PRC successfully used vaccine provision to convince the Brazilian government to reverse its ban on [Chinese tech company] Huawei’s participation in its 5G networks,” the report said, using the official acronym for People’s Republic of China.

The Pentagon further accused Beijing of strategically providing its coronavirus vaccines to key regions where they would most benefit from strengthened ties.

“Beijing primarily targeted countries in Asia and the global South, viewing the provision of COVID-19 vaccines as an opportunity to bolster China’s bilateral ties, advance its responsible great-power narrative and undercut support for Taiwan,” the report said.

China also “push[ed] disinformation on the origin of COVID-19” to distract from the shroud of suspicion over China’s possible role in the coronavirus outbreak, according to the report.

“State media and [Chinese] officials also engaged in an effort to push … denigrate democratic countries’ responses to COVID, and at times displayed a hardened political response to criticism,” it said.

Beijing also used its propaganda to “advance its responsible great power narrative.” For example, it continues to “assert the superiority of [China’s] political model in enabling its success against the virus,” such as its Zero-COVID strategy.

The policy – which Chinese citizens have been actively protesting this week – includes severe lockdowns, closed borders and mandatory testing regimes.