Overview of damage in the aftermath of an airstrike on a location called Kupyansk, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on August 28, 2024. | Photo credit: Reuters
Russia said on Thursday (29 August 2024) that it has captured two more eastern Ukrainian villages – in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions – as its forces continue their advance deeper into the country.
The Defense Ministry said Russian forces captured the village of Mykolaivka, about 15 km from the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, as well as the settlement of Stelmakhivka in the neighboring Lugansk region.
Russian forces have made steady and determined progress in recent months toward the Pokrovsk logistics hub – once home to some 60,000 people.
The outnumbered Ukrainian army, which has been waiting for more Western military aid, has struggled to stop their attacks.
Kiev launched a surprise ground attack on the Russian border region of Kursk earlier this month, hoping the offensive would draw Moscow’s army away from Donetsk.
However, the Russian military has concentrated its firepower on the industrial Donetsk region and has advanced in Kursk despite Ukrainian attacks.
Russian shelling on Nikopol in southern Ukraine has now killed one person and wounded five others, regional authorities said.
“A shopping center, several high-rise buildings, residential buildings, cars and a gas pipeline were damaged,” Sergiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, wrote on social media.
Kiev also said on Thursday (29 August 2024) that Russia had launched 74 attack drones and five missiles at targets across Ukraine, but that air defense systems had shot down most of the projectiles.
The overnight barrage was the third night of large-scale Russian bombing this week that killed at least 11 people.
AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens over Kiev and at least one explosion during the attacks.
Authorities in the capital and the surrounding area said several private homes were damaged but there were no known casualties in the airstrike.
In Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine, officials said the attack caused a fire covering almost 3,000 square meters that dozens of emergency workers were extinguishing.
The air force said its units downed two of the missiles and 60 of the Iranian-designed attack drones. More drones have crashed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week for the first time that Western-supplied F-16s had been used to counter drone and missile attacks.
