MOSCOW: Russian forces claimed it gained a “foothold” in the village of Ocheretyne, with a prewar population of 3,000, Ukraine’s military said, noting that fierce fighting continues in the area as Ukrainian forces struggle to repel the Russians in Ukraine’s Eastern Donetsk region.
Russian troops have been barraging Kyiv’s ammunition-depleted forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
Drone footage obtained by The Associated Press shows Ocheretyne obliterated by Russian strikes, with not a single building in the village untouched after the attacks.
Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions also were hit by Russian drones overnight. At least six people were injured, including a 13-year-old child, when the drones struck commercial and residential buildings, regional officials said Saturday.
While the Ukrainian Air Force said it downed all 13 Shahed drones targeting the regions, the debris from the falling drones in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv struck civilian targets, injured four people and caused a fire in an office building that has been brought under control, the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov, said in a post on the Telegram app.
Russian state news agency RIA reported Saturday that Russian forces targeted a drone warehouse overnight in Kharkiv that it said had been used by Ukrainian troops. The state media cited Sergei Lebedev, a self-described coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas.
His comments could not be independently verified, AP said.
In the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were wounded, according to regional governor Serhiy Lysak, who said a critical infrastructure facility and three houses were damaged.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday its air defense forces shot down four U.S.-produced long-range missiles known by the acronym ATACMS over the Crimean Peninsula. The ministry said that in the past week it has downed 15 ATACMS.
(VOA)
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