Ukraine warned on Monday that the Russian army was preparing to launch a new offensive on key towns in Donbass, in the east of the country, while attacks against the authorities in place in the occupied areas are increasing.
Europe, for its part, has entered a period of great uncertainty regarding the continuation of gas deliveries by Russia, the Russian giant Gazprom starting maintenance work on the two Nord Stream 1 gas pipelines, which supply the Germany and other western European countries.
This stop for ten days was in theory only to be a technical formality, but, with the war in Ukraine and the showdown between Moscow and the West on energy, no one can bet on the future.
In eastern Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, which has become the main objective of Russian troops, “there are signs that enemy units are preparing to intensify combat operations in the direction of Kramatorsk and Bakhmout”, warned in the morning the staff of the Ukrainian forces.
The governor of this province, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said in this regard on Friday that Russia was preparing its weapons for “new actions” in the eastern part.
The city of Kramatorsk, the administrative center of Donbass still under Ukrainian control, and the neighboring town of Sloviansk are considered to be the next targets of the Russian military in their plan to completely conquer Donbass, four and a half months after the start of the invasion from Ukraine.
This mining basin has been partially controlled since 2014 by separatists supported by Moscow after the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
31 dead in Chassiv Iar, six in Kharkiv
Meanwhile, the death toll from Sunday’s bombing of a residential building in Chassiv Iar, another locality in the Donetsk region, has risen to 31, the Ukrainian Emergency Service said.
AFP journalists saw dozens of rescuers working in the ruins of this partially destroyed building on Monday, helped by a mechanical digger.
The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, for his part assured that “more than 300” Ukrainian fighters had perished near Chassiv Iar, without however saying when.
In Kharkiv, in the northeast, “civilian buildings – a shopping center and housing – came under enemy fire in the morning. Several missiles hit houses. Garages and cars were also destroyed,” said regional governor Oleg Synegoubov.
“Around 10 a.m. [3 h 00 du matin au Québec], the aggressor country fired artillery from multiple rocket launcher systems on residential areas,” accused the regional prosecutor’s office: “31 people were injured including two children aged 4 and 16. Six civilians, including a 17-year-old boy and his father, were killed.”
In addition, Russian planes launched four missiles at the region of Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, in southern Ukraine, and there is no information at the moment on possible victims. , underlined Kyiv.
According to Serguii Khlan, an adviser to the head of the military administration loyal to the Ukrainian government in the Kherson region (south), a Russian military command center, radars and air defense systems were destroyed overnight by the Ukrainian army in Tavryisk, a locality occupied by the Russians located about sixty kilometers east of Kherson.
No Russian advance on the ground
The Ukrainian military reported heavy shelling throughout eastern Ukraine, but a pause in Russian ground attacks.
“The enemy in our operational zone remains behind the lines of defense, does not advance by land, does not have the possibilities and capabilities to create new strike groups,” the Southern Operational Command commented on Monday.
“The quantitative advantages of the Russian army are compensated by the precision of the missiles and artillery available to Ukraine,” said the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiï Danilov.
“Western weapons delivered to the Ukrainian Armed Forces are already changing the tide of the war. And we haven’t even started! “, he added.
“The Ukrainian army is holding firm,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hammered home on Sunday evening.
“This war could last longer than we had anticipated or hoped for. But that doesn’t mean we can sit around and passively watch how it unfolds. We must stay focused and continue to support Ukraine in every way possible,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the next day in kyiv.
A leader of the occupying forces assassinated
At the same time, the occupation authorities announced that a bomb attack had claimed the life of the head of the administration installed by the Russians in Veliki, in the Kharkiv region, partially conquered by Moscow.
This “terrorist act” was committed, on an unspecified date, by a group of Ukrainian saboteurs who infiltrated behind Russian lines, according to these sources.
The occupation authorities of the Kherson region also assured Monday that they had foiled an attempted attack against their leader in this territory that Ukrainian soldiers are trying to retake.
In recent weeks, attacks against officials put in place by Moscow have multiplied in the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, also in southern Ukraine. At the end of June, an official of the occupation administration had been killed in Kherson.
In this context, Russia has made it known that, through a decree by Vladimir Putin made public on Monday, it wanted to facilitate access to Russian nationality for all Ukrainians.
A measure that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs soon after “firmly” condemned, as constituting “a new encroachment on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, incompatible with the norms and principles of international law”.