Fast News
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Zelenskyy says 'brutal fighting is continuing in Donbass'
Russia has deployed a colossal amount of its military resources in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, adding, "brutal fighting is continuing in Donbass."
"The hottest points of the front in this direction remain unchanged: Avdiivka, Marinka, Pisky, Bakhmut and the corresponding direction," he said, adding, "All our male and female defenders there are simply heroes."
In Kharkiv region, he claimed the Ukrainian defence is strong "and the attempts of the occupiers to attack are constantly failing."
Zelenskyy claimed fighting in the south of the country is causing destruction of Russian army forces and their means. "No day is wasted, we are reducing the occupiers' potential."
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Source: TRTWorld and agencies
Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine's military and local officials said.
Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka had been considered key targets of Russia's ongoing offensive across Ukraine's east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
"In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation," the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 others in the Donetsk region in the last day, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram, saying two died in Poprosny, and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy.
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 Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow's troops seized it early in the war.
"After midnight, the Russian army struck the Nikopol area with (Soviet-era) Grad rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery," Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities also said a Russian missile attack overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets 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 was becoming more perilous day by day at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
"Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated" at the plant, he said. "What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous."
He expressed concern about the way the plant is being operated and the danger posed by the fighting going on around it. Experts at the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said they believe Russia is shelling the area intentionally, "putting Ukraine in a difficult position."
The Ukrainian company operating the nuclear power station said Saturday that Russian troops are using the plant's basement to hide from Ukrainian shelling and have barred its Ukrainian staff from going there.
"Ukrainian personnel do not yet have access to these premises, so in the event of new shelling, people have no shelter and are in danger," Enerhoatom, a Ukrainian state enterprise, said on its Telegram channel.
Enerhoatom said Friday that Russian rockets had damaged the plant's facilities, including a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line. Local Russian-appointed officials acknowledged the damage, but blamed it on alleged Ukrainian shelling.
In Ukraine's south, two civilians were seriously injured Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets on the Black Sea port of Mykolayiv before dawn, according to regional authorities. That followed a Friday afternoon attack on Mykolayiv that killed one person and wounded 21 others.
In the north, Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv and its surrounding area also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. An 18-year-old in Chuhuiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized Saturday after he picked up an unexploded shell.
Both Chuhuiv and Kharkiv have endured sustained Russian shelling in recent weeks, due to their proximity to the Russian border.
The neighboring Sumy region, which also borders Russia, has also seen near-constant shelling and missile strikes. Its regional governor said Saturday the province was hit more than 60 times from Russian territory over the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be hospitalized.
On the ammunition front, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a YouTube address, adding that Tehran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian army.
Kateryna never takes pictures with comrades before going to the front line — it's bad luck. Karina does not tell her mother she is going to the front. Iana uses social media to try and raise the morale at home.
On another day of war in eastern Ukraine, the three are resting with their unit in a village before another rotation.
They agree to talk about their lives on the front line of a war they were not expecting, which has lasted more than five months — and felt like years.
Kateryna Novakivska, 29, is deputy commander of a unit in the Donbas, an industrial region in eastern Ukraine where fighting is raging.
The 29-year-old comes from Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, and had just graduated from an army academy when the war broke out. Her role is to provide the troops with moral and psychological support.
After speaking about the "satisfactory" morale among soldiers and the justness of Ukraine's cause, she talks more personally about life on the front.
"The hardest thing for them is losing comrades," she said.
For Kateryna, it is being able to distance herself from the soldiers' horrific stories.
"They talk more easily with me because there are a lot of things that they cannot tell their loved ones," she said.
Their biggest fear is being left behind on the battlefield — dead or wounded.
She remembers one day, May 28, when 11 soldiers were killed and around 20 went missing. In the chaos of war, some troops disappear and nobody knows what has happened to them.
Kateryna's own greatest fear is being kidnapped by Russian soldiers, though she said she has "planned for everything."
She has a small scar on her nose — left by an explosion in March.
The lotus flower tattoo on her forearm is a memory from her time in Volnovakha in 2017 — a town now in Russian-occupied territory that Kateryna said "no longer exists."
On social media, Iana Pazdrii plays on the stereotypes of being a soldier, showing off her perfectly manicured nails as she drives an armoured vehicle or clutches a Kalashnikov.
The 35-year-old has been fighting since the start of the invasion in Ukraine and, like all her comrades, has not seen her child for five months.
"I volunteered because I am a patriot and I felt I could be useful here and I am," said Iana, who speaks of the army as "a family."
Whenever she has time, she posts little glimpses of military life on Instagram or TikTok.
"Some soldiers have to live on 'line zero' under shelling," she said, using a term frequently used in Ukraine for the front line.
"I try to show that we are keeping up morale despite everything, to tell people not to be afraid and that the army is doing everything to defend the country.
"But to be honest, it's hard sometimes."
Dozens of soldiers are killed every day on Ukraine's eastern front, where Russian forces made major advances in May and June, taking over almost the whole of the Lugansk region.
Since then, the front line has moved little, but ruthless artillery battles between the two sides have intensified.
Karina, a former textile worker of Tajik origin who signed up to the army in 2020 on a two-year contract, drives her armoured vehicle back and forth from the front line.
"When we are in position, it's hard thinking about fellow soldiers, hoping that nobody will be killed or wounded, that you yourself will not come under attack," said the young woman, who is also a mechanic.
Her husband is anxiously waiting for her at home — but she said "nobody tells me what to do."
When Karina calls her mother, she said: "I don't tell her I'm at line zero and she pretends to believe me."
Karina has no illusions — she does not think the war will be over soon.
"The Russians have already taken a lot of territory" in Ukraine, she said.
Her sister-in-arms Iana insisted there was no option but victory.
"Whatever happens, we will win. We do not have the right to lose," she said.
After the war, Iana wants to travel to the Caribbean and South America.
"I need to fulfil my dreams. I think I deserve it," she smiled.
Russia has tasked mercenaries to hold sections of the frontline in Ukraine in a sign it is running short of combat infantry, Britain's Ministry of Defence has said, as Kiev steps up a counter-offensive in the south.
The British defence ministry said in an intelligence update on Friday that Russia is relying more on the forces from its private military company Wagner Group for frontline duties.
"This is a significant change from the previous employment of the group since 2015, when it typically undertook missions distinct from overt, large-scale regular Russian military activity," the ministry said on Twitter.
However, the ministry said the mercenaries are unlikely to make up for the loss of regular infantry units or alter the trajectory of Russia's military campaign.
Wagner and the Kremlin were not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.
READ MORE: Deadly Russian strikes hit central Ukraine
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t9lWiZPui4[/embed]
Ukrainian counter-offensive
Officials in Kiev said on Wednesday they had observed a "massive redeployment" of Russian forces to the south where British defence officials believe Russia's 49th Army, stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River, is vulnerable.
The southern city of Kherson, key to Russia's overland supply lines from Russian-annexed Crimea, was now virtually cut off from the other territories occupied by Russia, British intelligence said on Thursday.
Kherson region fell to Russian forces soon after they began what Moscow calls "a special military operation" on February 24.
The Ukrainian military has used Western-supplied long-range missile systems to badly damage three bridges across the Dnipro in recent weeks, making it harder for Russia to supply its forces on the western bank.
Ukraine said its planes struck five Russian strongholds around Kherson and another nearby city on Thursday, the focus of its biggest counter-offensive of the conflict.
READ MORE: Russian forces step up Ukraine strikes, face Kherson counter-attack
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkPjbdbTCKk[/embed]
Kiev bombed
Also on Thursday, fifteen people were injured when Russian missiles hit military installations in Vyshhorod district on the edge of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Air raid sirens blared as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament alongside visiting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, as Ukraine marked its Day of Ukrainian Statehood with a public holiday for the first time on Thursday.
More than 10 Russian missiles also hit the Chernihiv region northeast of Kiev, regional Governor Vyacheslav Chausov told Ukrainian TV. Like Kiev, Chernihiv had not been targeted for weeks.
"This was Russia offering greetings on Ukraine’s Day of State Sovereignty," he said, adding there were concerns about a "second phase of ground operations by the enemy".
In addition, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian forces shelled the town of Bakhmut. At least three people were killed and three were injured, he said.
READ MORE: US presses Zelenskyy for 'independent' prosecutor to address corruption
Source: TRTWorld and agencies
