LAST UPDATE | 27 Aug

RUSSIA FIRED A wave of attack drones and missiles at Ukraine that killed at least five people, authorities said today, after a second night of heavy strikes across the war-battered nation.

Within hours of the barrage, Ukraine claimed fresh advances in its surprise assault on Russia’s Kursk border region and reported taking nearly 600 Russian troops as prisoners in the past three weeks.

“Crimes against humanity cannot be committed with impunity,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on social media, saying earlier today that four people had been killed and 16 wounded. One woman later died in hospital, authorities said.

AFP journalists in the capital Kyiv heard air raid sirens echo over the city throughout the night as well as an explosion, likely from air defence systems.

Yesterday’s attack was one of Moscow’s largest-ever on Ukraine, prompting Kyiv to push for allies’ permission to use Western-provided weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

Zelenskyy said in Kyiv that Ukraine had used Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets to counter the Russian barrages and also announced that Ukraine had successfully tested a domestically-produced ballistic missile.

Local authorities said three of the victims had been killed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region and two died in the central city of Kryvyi Rig after a missile struck a hotel.

The hotel strike comes just days after a team working for the Reuters news agency were hit by a missile in their hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing a safety advisor working with the agency.

The Russian attacks on Monday triggered widespread blackouts and spurred condemnation from Ukraine’s allies in Europe and the United States.

Russia said the attack had targeted infrastructure linked to the Ukrainian military. NATO member Poland said its airspace was violated during the barrage, probably by a drone.

Since invading in February 2022, Russia has launched repeated large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including punishing strikes on energy facilities.

Ukraine’s electricity grid operator said Tuesday that emergency blackouts would be applied throughout the day to reduce pressure on the grid following the fresh attacks that damaged energy infrastructure nationwide.

Local Ukrainian authorities said that three other civilians had been killed in separate attacks in the Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

Ukrainian forces have been pushing their offensive in Kursk, a surprise operation that has seen Kyiv gain swathes of territory in three weeks.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Kursk and Ukraine, said Tuesday he was aware of reports that the Ukrainian army had tried to cross the border.

“Information has emerged that the enemy is trying to break through the border of the Belgorod region,” its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

“According to the Russian defence ministry, the situation on the border remains difficult but under control,” he said on social media.

Zelenskyy said late yesterday that Ukraine’s cross-border incursion launched on August 6 was partially to “compensate” for Kyiv’s inability to strike deeper into Russian territory.

He has been appealing to Ukraine’s allies to allow his forces to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russian territory as part of efforts to thwart more aerial bombardments.

Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrsky said his forces had made fresh gains in Kursk recently and now controlled 100 towns and villages across 1,294 square km (almost 500 square miles).

He also claimed that Russian forces had redeployed some 30,000 troops to help fend off the Kursk incursion, and said Ukraine had taken 594 POWs in the weeks of the incursion — the first time Kyiv has offered a precise figure.

Moscow has nonetheless been making steady gains in Ukraine and said today that its forces had captured the village of Orlivka near the strategic railway hub of Pokrovsk.

Zelensky had said late Monday that defending Pokrovsk was “difficult” and that Ukraine was strengthening its positions there as Russian forces advance.

This week, AFP journalists saw civilians evacuating by train from Pokrovsk, once home to around 60,000 people, with panicked residents carrying their belongings in bags and pets with them.

- © AFP 2024