A Russian rocket attack in Kramatorsk killed three people and injured 13 on Friday night, according to the mayor. The city is the headquarters of Ukrainian forces in the war-torn east. The attack came less than a day after another 11 rockets were fired into the city, one of two main Ukrainian-controlled rocket ranges in Donetsk province, at the heart of Russia’s offensive to seize eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. A crater from a rocket attack on Friday night is seen next to damaged houses in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Saturday. (David Goldman/The Associated Press) Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday its forces were in control of Pisky, a village on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk, the capital of the province that pro-Moscow separatists have claimed since 2014. However, Ukraine’s military command later said in a Facebook post that “fierce fighting continues” in the region.
Ukraine says advance on 2 small towns prevented
Russian troops and Kremlin-backed rebels are seeking to seize Ukrainian-held areas north and west of the city of Donetsk to expand the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic. However, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday that its forces had foiled an overnight advance on the smaller towns of Avdiivka and Bakhmut. A local resident rides a bicycle past a rocket fragment embedded in the ground after a rocket attack in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Friday. (Anataloii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images) Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov also claimed that Russian strikes near Kramatorsk, 120 kilometers north of the city of Donetsk, destroyed a multiple rocket launcher and US-supplied ammunition. Ukrainian authorities did not acknowledge any military casualties, but said Russian missile attacks on Friday in Kramatorsk destroyed 20 residential buildings. Neither claim could be independently verified. The Ukrainian governor of neighboring Luhansk province, which is part of the battle for the Donbas region and was captured by Russian forces last month, claimed that Ukrainian troops still hold a small area. Writing on Telegram, Luhansk Governor Serhii Haidai said defense troops remained holed up inside an oil refinery on the edge of Lysychansk, a town Moscow claimed it had captured, and were also controlling areas near a village. A Ukrainian soldier prepares to fire a shell near a front line in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region on Saturday. (Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters) “The enemy is burning the ground at the entrances to the Luhansk region because they cannot overcome (Ukrainian resistance along) these few kilometers,” Haidai said. “It is difficult to count how many thousands of shells this soil of the Luhansk Free Zone has withstood in the last month and a half.”
Shelling was reported in Nikopolis
Further west, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region reported more Russian shelling of Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Yevhen Yevtushenko did not specify whether Russian troops had fired on Nikopol from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. In Telegram, he wrote on Saturday that there were no casualties, but residential buildings, a power line and a natural gas pipeline were damaged. Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffin of a fellow soldier during a funeral at the Bucha cemetery in the Kyiv region on Saturday. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images) Nikopoli has been under daily shelling for most of the past week, and a shelling attack killed three people and damaged 40 apartment buildings on Thursday, Yevtushenko said. Russian and Ukrainian officials have accused each other for days of bombing the Zaporizhia plant in violation of nuclear safety rules. Russian troops have occupied the plant since the early days of Moscow’s invasion, although the facility’s pre-war Ukrainian nuclear workers continue to operate it. Ukrainian military intelligence claimed on Saturday that Russian troops were shelling the plant from a village just kilometers away, destroying a pumping station and a fire station. The Intelligence Directorate said the Russians had taken people to the power plant and placed a Ukrainian flag on a self-propelled gun on the outskirts of Enerhodar, the town where the plant is located. “Apparently, it will be used for another provocation to blame the armed forces of Ukraine,” the directorate said, without elaborating. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly claimed that Russian forces cynically used the plant as a shield while shelling communities across the river, knowing that Ukrainian forces were unlikely to retaliate for fear of a nuclear accident. They said Russian shelling on Friday night killed one woman and wounded two other civilians in the town of Zaporizhzhia, which is about 53 kilometers as the crow flies from the plant. Ukraine’s southern Mykolayiv region also said a woman was killed there by shelling. For several weeks, Ukraine’s military has reportedly tried to lay the groundwork for a counteroffensive to retake the Russian-held Kherson region of southern Ukraine. Community service workers work in a crater after a rocket attack in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday during the Russian invasion. (AFP/Getty Images) A local Ukrainian official said Saturday that a Ukrainian strike destroyed the last working bridge over the Dnieper River in the region and further damaged Russian supply lines. “The Russians no longer have any possibility to fully hand over their equipment,” Serhii Khlan, deputy of the Kherson regional council, wrote on Facebook. His claims could not be immediately verified. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that damage to bridges across the Dnieper meant “land supply for the many thousands of Russian troops on the west bank is almost certainly dependent on just two ferry crossings”. “Even if Russia manages to make significant repairs to the [damaged] bridges, will remain a key vulnerability,” the ministry said.
Residents are urged not to post about military action
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly reported a planned counteroffensive to retake parts of the country’s south held by Russia. They urged residents not to post information on social media about military actions related to it and warned that any related announcements may come with a time delay. A child walks in Kramatorsk on Saturday on a street where houses were damaged hours earlier by a Russian rocket attack. (David Goldman/The Associated Press) Days after explosions at a Russian airbase in Crimea destroyed up to a dozen aircraft, an adviser to Ukraine’s president said Kyiv should make retaking the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow seized more than eight years ago one of the belligerents. of goals. “Russia started a war against Ukraine and the world in 2014, with its brazen seizure of Crimea. It is obvious that this war must end with the liberation of Crimea,” office chief Mykhailo Podoylak tweeted on Saturday. of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. . Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for the explosions at the Saki air base on Tuesday. Russian defense officials denied that the aircraft was damaged or that any attack had taken place, and attributed the explosions to the sparking of munitions on the ground.
