The Russian occupation authorities in southern Ukraine discussed on Monday the postponement of an annexation referendum planned by Russia, in the midst of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces in this region.
kyiv claims successes on this front by striking deep into Russian army logistics in the Kherson region, which has been occupied since March. Moscow ensures, for its part, inflict heavy losses on its opponent.
“We were prepared for the vote, we wanted to organize the referendum very soon, but because of the events of the moment, I believe that we are going to take a break”, declared on the antenna of the Russian public television Kirill Stremoussov, deputy head of the regional occupation administration.
Shortly after, he tempered his remarks on Telegram by returning to the term “pause”, but noting that “everything is not going as fast” as expected. According to him, “the referendum will take place whatever happens”, but the date cannot be fixed.
For weeks, the occupation administration of the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia said it was preparing “referendums” to attach these Ukrainian regions to Russia this fall, a scenario already implemented in 2014 during the annexation of Crimea. .
But Kherson and its region are targeted by a counter-offensive by Ukraine, which claims to have recaptured territory, inflicted losses on the Russians and disrupted supply lines by rendering the main bridges in the area, cut off from north to south by the Dnieper River.
Cut ties
On Sunday, a Russian ammunition depot was destroyed, according to the Ukrainian army, in Tomyna Balka, a locality west of the city of Kherson, as was a pontoon bridge near the village of Lvové and an ISIS control center. Russian army southeast of Kherson.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, announced the resumption of “two localities in the South” and a third in the East, without specifying their names, in his daily message on Sunday evening.
As for the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), it assured Monday in a press release that it had destroyed in the region of Zaporijjia a depot where ballot papers for the “referendum” organized by Moscow were stored.
“All the bridges” over the Dnieper in the Kherson region “are out of use,” spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army’s southern command, Natalia Goumenyuk, told a press conference, adding that ” three floating bridges” built by the Russian army had also been destroyed.
The Russian Ministry of Defense for its part claimed to inflict heavy losses on Ukrainians “who are trying to put down roots in certain areas” of the south.
The last reactor in operation at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in Zaporijjia (south), at the center of all concerns and where experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are located, was arrested due to shelling that caused a fire and damaged a power line, according to Ukrainian operator Energoatom.
Two experts from the IAEA, who arrived last week, are still on site to try to ensure the security of the site, according to the same source.
Russia have currently halted most of their attacking effort after some success in the east but failed to take kyiv in March. The Ukrainian army, armed with Western military supplies, launched a counter-offensive in the south a week ago.
Russia continues to hit Ukrainian cities with its artillery and missiles.
Powerful explosions
Thus, in Mykolaiv (south), “powerful explosions were heard in the city last night,” Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said on Telegram, indicating that there were no victims.
In Kharkiv, the big city in the north-east near the Russian border, “three people were injured by the shelling” on Sunday evening, according to Governor Oleg Sinegoubov. In the same region, two civilians were killed in a Russian bombardment on Monday morning, in Zolochiv.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, three civilians were killed on Sunday in the Donetsk region (east) and a woman on Monday in that of Dnipropetrovsk (center).
On the diplomatic and economic level, the European Commission and Ukraine signed an agreement on Monday on aid of 500 million euros which will be devoted to housing and education for displaced people as well as agriculture.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal pleaded on his Telegram account for “the introduction of a total energy embargo against Russia”.
But in this area, it is the Europeans who are currently victims of their dependence on Russian gas.
The Kremlin thus assured Monday that the cessation of deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream gas pipeline was the sole fault of the West, their sanctions preventing the maintenance of gas infrastructure.
“The pumping problems [de gaz] emerged because of Western state sanctions. There is no other reason for these problems,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He was speaking a few days after the shutdown of Nord Stream, a crucial gas pipeline for supplying Europeans who fear an energy crisis this winter.