(Kramatorsk) Ukraine warned on Monday that Russian forces were preparing to launch a new offensive on key towns in eastern Donbass, while attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, left six dead .
What you need to know
- Vladimir Putin facilitates obtaining Russian citizenship for all Ukrainians;
- The European Union must prepare for the arrival of new waves of refugees driven by the food crisis aggravated by the war in Ukraine;
- The Ritz-Carlton in Moscow changes its name after the departure of Marriott;
- Russian gas: Europe plunges into the unknown with the temporary shutdown of Nord Stream;
- In Boutcha in Ukraine, a difficult return to a certain normality;
- The EU, worried about arms trafficking, is strengthening its cooperation with Moldova;
- In Kharkiv, the country’s second city, Governor Oleg Synegoubov reported on Telegram new missile fire.
Europe, for its part, has entered a period of great uncertainty regarding the continuation of gas deliveries by Russia, with the Russian giant Gazprom starting maintenance work on the two Nord Stream 1 gas pipelines, which transport the gas delivered to the Germany and other western European countries.
This stop for 10 days was in theory only to be a technical formality. But in the context of the war in Ukraine and the showdown between Moscow and the West over energy, no one can bet on the future.
In the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which has become the main objective of Russian troops, “there are signs that enemy units are preparing to intensify combat operations in the direction of Kramatorsk and Bakhmout”, warned in the morning the staff of the Ukrainian army.
Kramatorsk, the administrative center of Donbass still under Ukrainian control, and the neighboring city of Sloviansk are seen as the next targets of the Russian military in their plan to completely conquer the Donbass mining basin, four and a half months after the start of the invasion from Ukraine.
26 dead in Chassiv Iar
Meanwhile, the death toll from Sunday’s shelling of an apartment building in Chassiv Iar, eastern Ukraine, has risen to 26, the local branch of Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service said. Nine people were also rescued.
PHOTO GLEB GARANICH, REUTERS
Rescue workers a survivor of the building.
AFP journalists saw dozens of rescuers working in the rubble of this partially destroyed building on Monday, helped by a mechanical digger.
Rescuers did not say how many people were still under the rubble.
Chassiv Iar, a locality of 12,000 inhabitants, is located in the Donetsk region which is the priority objective of Russian soldiers after their claimed conquest of the neighboring region of Luhansk to occupy the whole of Donbass.
It has been partially controlled since 2014 by separatists backed by Moscow after the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, for his part, assured Monday that “more than 300” Ukrainian fighters had been killed in strikes near Chassiv Iar, without however giving dates.
According to Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, at least 591 civilians have been killed and 1,548 others injured so far in the region since the Russian invasion began on February 24. On Friday, he said that Moscow was preparing “new actions” in the East.
The Ukrainian military reported heavy shelling throughout eastern Ukraine, but a pause in Russian ground attacks.
“The enemy in our operational area remains behind the defense lines, does not advance by land, does not have the possibilities and capabilities to create new strike groups,” Operational Command South said early Monday. .
Strikes on Kharkiv
In Kharkiv, in the northeast, “civilian buildings – a shopping center and housing – came under enemy fire. Several missiles hit houses. Garages and cars were also destroyed,” said city administration official Oleg Synegoubov.
PHOTO EVGENIY MALOLETKA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Around 10 a.m., the aggressor country fired artillery from multiple rocket launcher systems at residential areas,” the regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement: “31 people were injured, including two children of four and 16 years old. Six civilians, including a 17-year-old boy and his father, were killed.”
In his speech on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned “all those who order such strikes, all those who carry them out targeting our ordinary towns, our residential areas, kill absolutely deliberately” and promised to bring them to justice.
The Ukrainian army holds firm. But, of course, there is still a lot to do.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
In addition, Russian planes fired four missiles at the region of Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, in southern Ukraine, and there is no information at the moment on possible victims, announced the deputy head of the presidential administration, Kirill Tymoshenko.
According to Serguii Khlan, an adviser to the head of the military administration loyal to Kyiv in the Kherson region (south), a Russian military command center, radars and air defense systems were destroyed overnight by the army Ukrainian in Tavryisk, a locality occupied by the Russians located about sixty kilometers east of Kherson.
“We haven’t even started! »
“The quantitative advantages of the Russian army are offset by the precision of the missiles and artillery available to Ukraine,” said the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiï Danilov, on Twitter on Monday.
“Western weapons delivered to the Ukrainian Armed Forces are already changing the tide of the war. And we haven’t even started! “, he added.
The occupation authorities of the Kherson region also assured on Monday that they had foiled an attempted attack against their leader in this territory that Kyiv is trying to regain.
In recent weeks, attacks against officials put in place by Moscow have multiplied in the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, also in southern Ukraine. At the end of June, an official of the occupation administration was killed in Kherson.
Russia denounces acts of “terrorism” carried out by Ukraine.
