Ukrainian forces have re-captured the high ground around Bakhmut and are successfully encircling Russian troops in the city. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar told the Guardian, also speaking of the “nightmarish” situation that occurs further north, in the Kupiansk district of Kharkiv oblast, where the authorities have given orders to evacuate 12,000 civilians of 37 population centres.
“The main focus of the Ukrainian military is the south, while the Russians are focused on the east. The Russians are infiltrating two main areas: Kupyansk and Lyman, it’s a real nightmare there. In the north direction of Bakhmut the Russians attack. We attack Bakhmut’s south flank. Why do Russians do this? – Maliar wonders – It’s because we’re making good progress on the two flanks of Bakhmut, where we’ve taken practically all the hills. The Russians are trapped, they can’t go out and move around the city because the Ukrainians are bombing them from above“.
“To draw our forces away from Bakhmut, the Russians have advanced in other directions”, continues Maliar, according to whom the Russians have “exposed their rear at Bakhmut and are “launching offensives in other places to stop our attack on Bakhmut”.
According to Kiev Russian forces are losing so many soldiers that they have had to build a crematorium near Melitopol, so you don’t have to repatriate the bodies. “At the moment there is hostility on all fronts. Many enemies are being killed, there are hundreds of dead every day on the Eastern and Southern fronts. The Russian occupation forces are trying to hide the true extent of the losses and are burying the bodies in the temporarily occupied territories instead of sending the remains back to Russia.” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote in Telegram, explaining that the bodies of the killed soldiers are transported by truck to Zaporizhzhia Oblast and then cremated in an area near Melitopol. There are two burial sites in Kherson oblast, one of which now covers 100 hectares.
Zaporizhzhia is under attack again. “The city experiences daily Russian shelling. A fire broke out in a civilian building after the occupants hit it with a missile. So far, one person has been reported dead,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram. According to Mayor Anatoly Kurtiev, the raid hit “civilian infrastructure” and “the number of injured as a result of the attack has already risen to 9 people”.
The nuclear power plant was again disconnected from the external power grid and had to fall back on the reserve line. Energoatom, the energy company that manages the Russian-occupied nuclear plant in Ukraine, has warned that there is a risk of blackouts since this reserve line has a capacity of less than half that of the electricity grid.
Yesterday a Russian Kh-35 missile destroyed a church and damaged several residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia. A man and two girls aged 19 and 21 died.
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