Russian Army Shelling heavy in the east
Russia’s military bombed residential areas across Ukraine overnight, claiming gains as Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive to try to retake an occupied region of the south and attacked the last functioning bridge over a river in the Russian-held Kherson region. (Russia, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday)
According to the mayor, three people were killed and 13 others injured in the Russian rocket attack on the city of Kramatorsk on Friday night. Kramatorsk is the headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the east of the war-torn country.
The attack came less than a day after another 11 missiles. were fired at the city, one of the two main Ukrainian-held cities in Donetsk province, which is the focus of an ongoing Russian offensive to capture the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday claimed its forces had taken control of Pisky, a town on the outskirts of Donetsk city, the provincial capital claimed by pro-Moscow separatists since 2014. Russian troops and Kremlin-backed rebels are attempting to seize Ukrainian-controlled areas north and west of the city of Donetsk in a bid to expand the self-proclaimed separatist republic.
But the Ukrainian army said on Saturday that its forces prevented a night advance into the smaller towns of Avdiivka and Bakhmut. RUSSIA-UKRAINE WARUUkrainian minister says Russia is blocking access to medicines ship arrives in Ukraine to load wheat for starving Africa. Russian oil deliveries to the Czech Republic continue.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov also claimed that Russian attacks near Kramatorsk, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the city of Donetsk, destroyed a US-supplied multiple rocket launcher and ammunition. Ukrainian authorities did not concede military casualties but said Russian missile strikes in Kramatorsk on Friday destroyed 20 residential buildings.
The Ukrainian governor of neighboring Luhansk province, which is part of the fighting over the Donbas region and was ambushed by Russian forces last month, said Ukrainian troops still controlled a small area.
Luhansk Governor Serhii Haidai wrote on Telegram that defense forces remained hidden at an oil refinery on the outskirts of Lysychansk, a city Moscow allegedly captured, and also controlled areas near one city. Ukrainian resistance) those few kilometers, Haidai said.
It is difficult to count how many thousands of shells this area of the Free Luhansk Region has withstood in the last month and a half. Further west, the governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region reported another Russian shelling of the town of Nikopol, which lies across the Dnieper from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Governor Yevhen Yevtushenko did not specify whether Russian troops fired on Nikopol from occupied Zaporizhia. nuclear power plant.
He said by telegram on Saturday that there were no injuries, but that residential buildings, a power line, and a gas line were damaged. people and damaged 40 homes on Thursday, he said.
“Russia started a war against Ukraine and the world in 2014, with its brazen seizure of Crimea. It is obvious that this war should end with the liberation of Crimea,” Mykhailo Podoylak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, wrote Saturday on Twitter. “And also with the legal punishment of the initiators of the ‘special military operation’” – the Kremlin’s term for its war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for the explosions at the Saki air base on Tuesday. Russian defense officials denied any aircraft were damaged – or that any attack took place – and attributed the blasts to the sparking of on-site munitions.
Russian and Ukrainian officials have been accusing each other of bombing the Zaporizhia power plant in violation of nuclear safety regulations for days. Russian troops have occupied the plant since the early days of the invasion of Moscow, although the plant’s pre-war Ukrainian nuclear workers continue to operate it.
Ukrainian military intelligence claimed on Saturday that Russian troops shelled the plant from a town a few kilometers away, damaging a pumping station at the plant and a fire station. SPG is on the outskirts of Enerhodar, the city where the plant is located. “Obviously, it is being used for another provocation to indict the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” management said, without giving further details.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly claimed that Russian forces cynically used the facility as a shield when firing at communities across the river, knowing Ukrainian forces were unlikely to respond for fear of a nuclear accident. They said Friday night’s Russian bombardment killed a woman and injured two other civilians in the town of Zaporizhia, about 53 kilometers (33 miles) as the crow flies from the plant.
The Mykolayiv region of southern Ukraine also said one of the women there was killed in the shelling. For several weeks, the Ukrainian military has been trying to lay the foundations for a counter-offensive to recapture the Russian-occupied Cherson region in southern Ukraine.
A local Ukrainian official reported on Saturday that a Ukrainian attack damaged the last working bridge across the Dnieper in the region and further crippled Russian supply lines.”Russians are no longer able to fully deliver their equipment,” Serhii Khlan, a deputy for the Kherson regional council, wrote on Facebook. His claims could not be immediately verified.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly mentioned a planned counter-offensive to retake Russian-held parts of the south of the country. They urged residents not to post information about related military action on social media, warning that any announcement in this regard could be delayed by days.
Days after explosions at a Russian airbase in Crimea destroyed up to a dozen planes, an aide to Ukraine’s president said Kyiv should make retaking the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow captured more than eight years ago, one of its wartime goals.