The Ukrainian Supreme Military Command stated in its daily report that the Russian forces carried out two failed operations around Bakhmut and launched a number of air strikes and artillery attacks on nearby villages.
And the commander of the Russian private Wagner Group announced, on Saturday, that 99 percent of his fighters left Bakhmut after their attack, which lasted for months in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
Ukraine said late last month that fighting had decreased in the region, but the commander of the ground forces, Oleksandr Sersky, said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were continuing to fight there.
“The enemy continues to suffer heavy losses on the way towards Bakhmut. The defense forces continue to fight. We will win,” Sersky added on the Telegram app after a visit he said he made to the forces around Bakhmut.
Aerial bombardment of Dnipro and Kiev
On the other hand, a two-year-old girl was killed and 22 other people were wounded in an air attack in Dnipro, central Ukraine, as announced by Ukrainian officials.
President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians of “attacking the city”.
The governor of the Dnipro region, Sergey Lysak, said in a message on the Telegram application, on Sunday, that the bombing hit two residential buildings of two floors, ten houses, a shop and a gas pipeline.
He added that “the body of a girl was recovered from under the rubble of a house in the Bydorodninska area,” explaining that she “had just reached the age of two.”
“22 people were wounded, including 5 children,” he added. He had spoken of 3 boys in serious condition in hospital.
Zelensky held Russia responsible for the bombing, and the Ukrainian president published a video clip showing rescuers searching the destroyed building and the roar of industrial excavators was heard.
In Kiev, the head of the local military administration said that the capital’s air defenses had intercepted a number of missiles and drones.
“According to preliminary information, no air target has reached the capital,” Serhiy Popko wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
He added that “the air defense forces destroyed everything heading to the city from a distance, and for the second night in a row, the people of Kiev did not hear explosions over their heads.”
Russian air strikes on Ukraine and Ukrainian bombing of Russian soil have intensified in recent weeks, while Kiev confirms that it is preparing for a major attack against Moscow’s forces with the aim of regaining the lands it lost since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
On the other side of the border, Ukrainian shells killed two people, Saturday, in Belgorod, Russia, the region’s governor said.
The border villages in this region have been subjected to unprecedented artillery shelling in recent days, which resulted, after Saturday’s shelling, in the fall of seven people this week.
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