Ukraine’s military said it was advancing near the eastern city of Bakhmut and fighting a heavy artillery battle with Russian forces near Kherson in the southeast, as Kyiv urged the international community to ensure Moscow’s troops did not sabotage Europe’s biggest nuclear power station.
“We have advanced on the Bakhmut axis. Combat work is taking place on the flanks, and pressure is being applied to the enemy,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military in the eastern sector, said on Sunday.
Kyiv says its troops have made significant progress in recent weeks to the north and south of Bakhmut in an apparent bid to encircle Russian forces that finally seized the devastated transport hub in May after months of heavy fighting.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive this month which is expected to focus on regaining territory in southeastern Ukraine and cutting the land link between Russia’s border and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.
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The Dnipro river is the de facto front line in Kherson region and parts of neighbouring Zaporizhzhia, and reports from the former last week suggested that Ukrainian troops had managed to establish a foothold on the Russian-held eastern bank – much of which was flooded when the Moscow-controlled Kakhovka dam was destroyed last month.
Collaborationist official Vladimir Saldo said on Saturday that Russian special forces had driven Ukrainian troops from positions they had gained on the eastern bank of the Dnipro under and around what remains of the Antonivskyi bridge.
Russian military bloggers reporting on the fighting said the battle continued, however, and Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern forces, said on Sunday that “powerful combat work” was taking place in the area, with particular focus on artillery duels between the opposing armies. Four people were reportedly hurt in Russian shelling of Kyiv-controlled Kherson city on the western bank of the Dnipro on Sunday.
Kyiv came under attack from Russian drones and cruise missiles for the first time in 12 days on Sunday. Officials said that all of them were shot down by air defence systems, and falling debris damaged three buildings and injured one person.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the Black Sea port of Odesa, about 200km west of Kherson, and met and gave state awards to members of his country’s navy, whom he praised for preventing Russian forces from landing on its southern coast.
“The enemy will definitely not dictate the conditions in the Black Sea, and the occupiers will have to be as afraid of approaching our Ukrainian Crimea and our Azov Sea coast, just as Russian ships are already afraid of approaching our Black Sea coast,” he said.
“I thank all the sailors, port workers, ship repairers, businesses, employees and, of course, every soldier who protects the security of Ukrainian ports, Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian shores. We will win together. Ukrainian shores will never tolerate the occupier.”
After talks with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez in Kyiv on Saturday, Mr Zelenskiy called on the international community to ensure Russia did not damage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station either while occupying the site or having left it.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency says Russia has mined the facility and is prepared to cause a radiation leak there in a bid to halt the advance of Kyiv’s forces.
“That’s why it’s very dangerous. We say this again and again out loud – just as we spoke a year ago about the blowing up of the dam of the Kakhovka reservoir. We shared our intelligence data with partners. The same thing is happening now with the Zaporizhzhia power plant,” he said.
Mr Zelenskiy said that if Russian forces leave the facility International Atomic Energy Agency experts must be ready to go there immediately to ensure Moscow “does not trigger some sort of explosion remotely to cause a discharge (of radiation)”, adding that “we know for sure that Russia has looked at this as one of its plans”.
Moscow denies blowing up the Kakhovka dam – which caused flooding in Kherson region that killed dozens of people and forced thousands of evacuate – and claims that Kyiv’s troops, rather than its own, pose a threat to the Zaporizhzhia plant and its six reactors.
