Both the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been seen as key targets in Russia’s ongoing offensive in eastern Ukraine, with analysts saying Moscow must take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. “In the direction of Donetsk, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts in the directions of Bakhmut and Avdiivka. It is using ground attack and military aviation,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook. The last Russian strike on Sloviansk was on July 30, but Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions around the city in anticipation of further fighting. The last Russian strike on Sloviansk, Ukraine, was on July 30, but Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions around the city in anticipation of further fighting. Colonel Yury Bereza, head of Ukraine’s volunteer national guard regiment, told The Associated Press that he expects things “will not be calm for long.” He said that eventually there will be an attack. (David Goldman/The Associated Press) “I think it won’t be calm for long. Eventually, there will be an attack,” Colonel Yuriy Bereza, head of the volunteer national guard regiment, told The Associated Press. Russian shelling has 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 were killed in Poprosny and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy .
Civilians were injured in Nikopolis
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured when Russian rockets landed in a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow’s troops seized it early in the war. “After midnight, the Russian army hit the Nikopol region with Grad rockets and the Kryvyi Rih region with barrel artillery,” wrote Valentyn Reznichenko on Telegram. Piles of grain are seen sitting inside a damaged warehouse on Friday in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The facility was damaged by a recent Russian missile attack. (Dmytro Smolienko/Reuters) Another Russian missile attack overnight destroyed unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporizhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets into Nikopoli, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without power. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation was becoming more dangerous by the day at the Zaporizhia plant. He expressed his concern about the way the factory was operating and the danger posed by the fighting around it. Experts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War said they believed Russia was bombing the region deliberately, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position”. The Ukrainian company that operates the nuclear plant said on 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 still do not have access to these facilities, so in case of new shelling, people have no shelter and are at risk,” Enerhoatom, a Ukrainian state-owned enterprise, said on its Telegram channel. Enerhoatom said on Friday that Russian missiles damaged facilities at the plant, including a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line. Local Russian-appointed officials acknowledged the damage but blamed Ukrainian bombing.
Strikes in Mykolaiv, Kharkiv
In southern Ukraine, two civilians were seriously injured on Saturday when Russian forces fired rockets into the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv before dawn, regional authorities said. This followed Friday afternoon’s attack in Mykolaiv that killed one person and injured 21 others. In the Kherson region south of Mykolaiv, the deputy mayor of the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka was in critical condition after an assassination attempt, Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti reported, citing the Kherson region’s vice president. which is under Russian control. An official surveys the ruins of a furniture factory in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after a rocket attack. (Sergei Bobok/AFP/Getty Images) To the north, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and the surrounding area also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. An 18-year-old man in Chuhuiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized on Saturday after picking up an unexploded shell. Both Chuhuiv and Kharkiv have come under constant Russian shelling in recent weeks due to their proximity to the Russian border. The neighboring region of Sumy, which also borders Russia, has also seen near-constant shelling and rocket attacks. Its governor said Saturday that the province had been hit more than 60 times by Russian territory the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be hospitalized. On the munitions front, Russia has begun using Iranian fighter drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a YouTube address, adding that Tehran has transferred 46 drones to the Russian military. A Ukrainian official said on Saturday that North Macedonia had agreed to supply tanks and planes to Ukraine to help repel Moscow’s ongoing invasion. “Many nations are showing more courage today than half of the G20. Like North Macedonia, giving Ukraine one [supportive] shoulder in the form of tanks and planes,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. North Macedonia’s defense ministry confirmed last week that it would supply Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine, but said nothing about aircraft deliveries.
