Over the weekend, a series of Russian offensives in Eastern Ukraine resulted in no less than 11 fatalities, officials report. In the city of Dnipro, rescue workers sifted through the wreckage of a nine-storey apartment block, destroyed by a Moscow-led attack, with at least one confirmed death.
These strikes occur amidst ongoing Russian attempts to put pressure on Ukrainian troops at numerous front-line locations. Moscow aims to exhaust Ukraine’s resources with increased air bombardments, frequently on essential infrastructure and energy establishments.
Presenting briefings on the attacks, governor Vadym Filashkin confirmed five citizens were wounded in the Donetsk region’s front-line village, Niu-York, as a result of the onslaught. Over the past day, he reported that inhabited areas had been bombed 13 times by Russian troops.
The Russian ministry for emergency situations confirmed injuries to four of their firefighters due to Ukrainian bombing in Donetsk, during their response to a fire that followed a shelling on Sunday. The firefighters were hit whilst attempting to evacuate the site.
Donetsk stands among the four areas in Ukraine’s southeast region that Russia claimed to have seized in late 2022, a move deemed illegal by the majority of countries represented in the UN General Assembly. Russia, however, is yet to fully control these four regions.
Vilniansk, on Saturday afternoon, was also hit by Russian bombardments, causing seven deaths, including two children, according to an account by governor Ivan Fedorov on social media. He added that the shelling injured an additional ten residents and inflicted considerable damage on the town’s infrastructure.
In Dnipro, a Russian attack resulted in at least one fatality and wounded 12 others, among them a seven-month-old child. This follows the partial destruction of an apartment block on Friday night, as relayed by regional chief Serhii Lysak, with several inhabitants still unaccounted for.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine indicated that the Dnipro assault underscored the necessity for further reinforcements to the country’s air defence systems among global allies. In fact, on Saturday, Ukrainian forces reported that they had shot down 10 Russian drones overnight.
President Zelenskiy reiterated the role of allies in counteracting Russian aggression, stating, “This is why we continually appeal to all our global partners: only with ample top-tier air defence systems and sufficient global resolve can Russian terror be halted.”
Local authorities in Russia’s Kursk region revealed a drone attack by Ukraine, which has resulted in the tragic loss of five lives, including that of two minors, in the village of Gorodishche, situated along the Russian-Ukrainian border. This was announced on social media by the region’s governor, Alexey Smirnov. Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry, in their morning briefing, divulged that they neutralised six Ukrainian drones in Tver, Bryansk, and Belgorod, along with the disputed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, during the overnight operations. However, they made no mention of the reported drone attack in Kursk.
In response to what they termed as security threats, the Belarusian military has reportedly sent additional troops along Ukraine’s northern frontier. This followed the claim by Belarus’s border authority that it had intercepted a Ukrainian spy drone flying over their territory. This was promptly denied by the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and they described the accusations as a manipulative move by Russia.
According to Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, Russia’s strategy is to divert the Ukrainian forces to the Belarusian border, dismissing every information on the subject as fabricated. Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, who has a close affiliation with Russia, allowed the country to launch their invasion on Ukraine from his territory in February 2022.
Russia’s ministry of defence announced on Sunday that their air defence systems shot down 36 Ukrainian drones launched overnight, targeting various regions in southwestern Russia. As per the update provided on the Telegram messaging app, 15 drones were intercepted over Kursk, 9 over Lipetsk which is well below the city of Moscow, 4 each over Voronezh and Bryansk, and 2 each over nearby Oryol and Belgorod regions. The significant attack had no casualties or serious damage as affirmed by the governors of Lipetsk and Bryansk on their Telegram channels.
However, Russian officials’ disclosures regarding the damage incurred by Ukrainian attacks are often believed to be not completely transparent. Meanwhile, Reuters has not been able to cross-verify these reports independently, and there is yet to be a comment from the Ukrainian side.
As per Kyiv’s statement, the strikes executed on Russian military, transportation, and energy establishments serve as a counter reaction to Moscow’s assaults on Ukrainian land. This has been the case since the commencement of Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine in 2022, according to Reuters.