Article Author:
Associated Press
Susie Blanc
Kyiv, UKRAINE (AP) — Russian forces launched attacks on two major cities in the East Donetsk region on Saturday, launching rocket and artillery attacks. Other Ukrainian cities, including cities near Europe's largest nuclear power plant, said Ukrainian military and local officials.
Both the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka were considered prime targets of the ongoing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine. Analysts say Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance in its regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
“In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting offensive operations, concentrating its main forces in the direction of Bakhmut and Avdivka. ,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
Donetsk Oblast Governor Pablo Kirilenko wrote on Telegram on Saturday that five civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the Donetsk region in Russian artillery shelling, two in Poprosny and one wounded. He said he died in Avdiuka, Soledar and Pervomaisky respectively.
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were killed after Russian rockets fell from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant into a residential area of Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper. said he was injured. The nuclear power plant has been under Russian control since it was seized by Moscow forces early in the war.
"After midnight, Russian troops attacked the Nikopol area with Gradhis (Soviet-era) rockets, and the Kriviehis Lee area with barrel guns," said Valentin. Leznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian officials also said overnight Russian missile attacks damaged unspecified infrastructure in the provincial capital of Zaporizhia. On Thursday, Russia fired her 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 homes in the city of 107,000 people and depriving residents of electricity.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation at the Zaporizhia plant is becoming more dangerous by the day.
"All nuclear safety principles have been violated," he said. "What is at stake is very serious, very serious and dangerous."
It expressed concern about the dangers posed by the fighting.An expert at the US-based War Research Institute said Russia was deliberately shelling the region, "putting Ukraine in a difficult position." Said he was thinking.
The Ukrainian company that operates the nuclear power plant said on Saturday that Russian troops were using the plant's basement to hide from Ukrainian artillery fire and that Ukrainian staff were not allowed to go there. said it was forbidden.
"Ukrainian officials do not yet have access to these facilities, so in the event of renewed artillery fire, people are without shelter and at risk," said a Ukrainian state enterprise. his Enerhoatom said on his Telegram channel.
Enerhoatom said on Friday that Russian rockets had damaged factory facilities, including nitrogen oxygen equipment and high-voltage power lines. A Russian-appointed local official acknowledged the damage but blamed the alleged Ukrainian shelling.
Two civilians were seriously injured in southern Ukraine on Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets into the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv before dawn, local officials said. It followed Friday afternoon's attack on Mikolaiv, in which one person was killed and 21 injured.
In the north, Kharkov, Ukraine's second-largest city, and surrounding areas also came under Russian rocket attack overnight, according to Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov. His 18-year-old boy from Tyfiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized on Saturday after picking up an unexploded ordnance.
Both Chuhuiv and Kharkiv have endured sustained Russian artillery fire in recent weeks due to their proximity to the Russian border.
The neighboring Sumy region, which borders Russia, is also under near constant artillery and missile attack. The region's governor said on Saturday that the province had been attacked more than 60 times by Russian territory the previous day, and one injured civilian had to be hospitalized.
On the munitions front, Russia has started using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arrestovich said in his YouTube address, saying Tehran would be the first to use his 46 drones. It added that it had handed over the drones to the Russian military. Follow all his AP articles on the war in Ukraine at
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https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
