Russia has been intensifying its attacks in Ukraine for weeks, and military activity is increasing, especially in the Donbass. According to Ukrainian sources, the situation in the region is “tense” but under control.
The Ukrainian army reports heavy fighting with Russian troops in the Donbass. The main areas are the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, said Serhiy Tscherevatyj, spokesman for the army group in the east of the country, on Ukrainian television. “The enemy continues their assault attacks, firing all kinds of barrel artillery, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and mortars,” the officer said.
The military information was not independently verifiable. But the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zalushnyj, also reported to the NATO commander-in-chief Christopher Cavoli on the phone that Russia had tripled its attacks. He spoke of up to 80 attacks a day. The situation at the front was “tense but under control,” Zalushnyj said on Telegram.
Russian troops, especially the Wagner mercenary group, have been attacking the Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region for months. Avdiivka, a few kilometers north of Donetsk, has been a frontline town since 2014. The Russian troops and units of the Moscow-controlled separatists were only able to gain small ground there in eight months of war.
In view of the fierce fighting, the Ukrainian general staff has been assuming high Russian losses for days and speaks of several hundred deaths every day. Military experts in Kyiv said that even if the numbers were too high, they said something about casualties among the newly dispatched Russian reservists.
According to the regional administration, the city of Zaporizhia was fired at night with Russian missiles from the S-300 air defense system. According to the Ukrainians, they shot down eight Iranian-made Russian drones over the Dnepropetrovsk region. One such drone was also intercepted over the Lviv region in the west of the country.
In the south of the country, Ukraine is still on the rise. Western security circles announced on Thursday that Russia was preparing to withdraw from Cherson in southern Ukraine. The strategically important city was one of the first to be occupied by Russian troops and is one of the four areas that Kremlin chief Putin recently declared part of Russia, in violation of international law.
On Friday, Putin ordered civilians to leave the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson. All those living in Kherson should be taken out of the dangerous area, the state news agency RIA quoted Putin as saying. The civilian population should “not suffer”. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, complained about the deportations of its citizens by Russia. “Deportations” similar to those in Cherson were “also carried out in the regions of Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk and in Crimea,” it said.
The ministry also complained about looting by Russian soldiers in the affected regions. In the past week, around 70,000 civilians had left the area. As the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday, “more than 5,000 civilians” are being evacuated from the region every day. The governor of Cherson appointed by Moscow, Vladimir Saldo, justified this with the risk of “massive rocket attacks” by the advancing Ukrainian army.
