The Ukrainian military kept the annexed Kherson region under heavy pressure on Saturday, forcing Russian troops to strengthen their defenses to prevent the loss of more territory in southern and eastern Ukraine.
“At this moment, the active phase of the Ukrainian army’s offensive that we were waiting for has begun,” Kiril Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in the annexed Kherson region (southern Ukraine), told Russian public television.
According to the Russian newspaper Moskovski Komsomolets, the Ukrainian army will have gathered around 60,000 soldiers, currently stationed in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
The pro-Russian representative tried to downplay the situation and stressed that the Russian army “is prepared to repel all these attacks and resist to the end.”
According to Stremousov, the Ukrainian side today opted for artillery duels, which are concentrated in the areas surrounding the city of Dudchani, located on the right bank of the Dnieper River, still controlled by Russia.
The Ukrainian strikes activated air defense systems over Nova Kakhovka, where two explosions were heard, with no damage reported.
The risk of the Ukrainian offensive forced the interim governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, to ask Russia for help to evacuate civilians last Thursday, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Jusnulin assured that Moscow would offer free accommodation to refugees.
This after the significant losses of territory recently suffered by the Russian army in the face of the Ukrainian advance, which managed to recover more than 1,000 square kilometers in this Ukrainian region.
Further north, along the Dnieper River, in the Ukrainian regions of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, Russian troops are also on the defensive, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Ground Forces said today.
“In the directions of Novopavlovsk (Mykolaiv) and Zaporizhia, the enemy has not carried out offensive actions and continues to draw defensive lines and positions. Serious casualties in the Russian forces.
The Ukrainian army also reported that “a large number of wounded are hospitalized in medical facilities in the temporarily occupied territories.”
“Hospitals are overcrowded in Tokmak city, Zaporizhia region,” the same source said.
According to testimonies of local residents cited by kyiv, “hospitals (in the Russian-occupied areas) do not accept civilians due to the overwork of doctors and lack of beds.”
Due to the shortage “of medical care and the refusal of the command of the Russian occupation forces to evacuate the seriously wounded to Russian territory, the mortality rate exceeds 50%,” added the military entity.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry assured that in the early hours of this Friday “it stopped the preparations of the Ukrainian army” for a landing operation in the area of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, controlled by Russian troops.
Russian command spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that as a result of this action “more than 50 Ukrainian soldiers were annihilated”, five speedboats, two barges, two tanks and four armored vehicles were destroyed.
However, the Russian attack on a power station in kyiv this morning has endangered the power supply in the capital and the region, which could suffer emergency cuts.
“The enemy carried out another barbaric attack on critical infrastructure. As a result, the installation of energy infrastructure in the kyiv region suffered severe destruction,” the state-owned energy company Ukrenergo reported.
Source: TSF
