KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched an assault Saturday on two key cities in eastern Donetsk region and continued rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukrainian military and local officials said. .
Both the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiyivka are considered key targets of Russia’s ongoing offensive in eastern Ukraine, with analysts saying Moscow must capture Bakhmut if it wants to advance on the regional centers of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
“In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts in the Bakhmut and Avdiiv directions. A ground attack and army aviation are being used,” the Ukrainian General Staff announced on Facebook.
The last Russian strike on Slavyansk was on July 30, but Ukrainian forces are strengthening their positions around the city in anticipation of more fighting.
“I don’t think it will be quiet for long. Eventually, there will be an assault,” Col. Yuriy Bereza, regimental commander of the Volunteer National Guard, told The Associated Press.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and wounded 14 others in the Donetsk region over the past day, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko wrote on Telegram on Saturday, saying two people were killed in Poprosny and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaisky.
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after Russian rockets fell on a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow troops seized it at the start of the war.
“After midnight, the Russian army hit the Nikopol area with (Soviet-era) Grad missiles, and the Kryvyi Rih area with barrel artillery,” Valentin Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Another overnight Russian missile attack damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporozhye. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 missiles at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without electricity.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation at the Zaporizhia plant was becoming more dangerous by the day.
“All principles of nuclear safety have been violated” at the plant, he said. “The stake is extremely serious.”
He expressed concern about the way the plant was being operated and the danger posed by the fighting around it. Experts from the US-based Institute for the Study of War said Russia was deliberately shelling the area, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position”.
The Ukrainian company that runs the nuclear power plant said on Saturday that Russian troops were using the plant’s basement to hide from Ukrainian shelling and had banned their Ukrainian personnel from going there.
“Ukrainian personnel still do not have access to these premises, so in case of new shelling, people have no shelter and are in danger,” Enerhoatom, a Ukrainian state-owned enterprise, said on its Telegram channel.
Enerhoatom said on Friday that Russian missiles damaged the plant’s facilities, including a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line. Local officials appointed by Russia acknowledged the damage but blamed the Ukrainians.
In other developments:
__ In southern Ukraine, two civilians were seriously injured Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets at the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv before dawn, according to regional authorities. It followed an attack on Nikolaev on Friday afternoon that killed one person and injured 21 others.
__In the Kherson region, south of Nikolaev, the deputy mayor of the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka is in critical condition after an assassination attempt, Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti reported, citing the deputy head of the Kherson region, most of which is under Russian control.
__The first of three more ships carrying thousands of tonnes of corn from Ukraine dropped anchor north of Istanbul on Saturday awaiting inspection, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. The Panamanian-flagged Navi Star, carrying 33,000 tonnes of grain to Ireland, left Odessa on Friday. It was followed by the Turkish-flagged Polarnet and Maltese-flagged Rojen, carrying over 25,000 tonnes of maize between them from Chernomorsk. The Joint Inspection Center was created to send the world the grain blocked in Ukraine by the war. On Friday, the center inspected its first northbound ship as it headed for Chernomorsk.
__To the north, Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv and its surroundings also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, according to regional governor Oleg Sinegubov. An 18-year-old youth in Chuhuyev, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized on Saturday after picking up an unexploded shell. Both Chuguev and Kharkiv are close to the Russian border and have come under sustained Russian shelling in recent weeks.
__Neighboring Sumy Oblast, which also borders Russia, has also been subject to near-constant shelling and missile strikes. Its governor said Saturday that the region had been hit more than 60 times from Russian territory in the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be hospitalized.
__ As for munitions, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said on YouTube, adding that Tehran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian military.
___
Joanna Kozlovska contributed from London.
___
Follow all AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at
Add Comment