Ukraine announced on Tuesday that it struck Russian forces in the occupied Kherson region in the south of the country on Tuesday night, while missiles from Moscow fell in large numbers on Mykolaiv, further west. .
kyiv would thus have bombarded troops stationed at Nova Kakhovka, causing the death of 52 soldiers and destroying an ammunition depot.
The occupation authorities put in place by the Russians immediately described these strikes as “acts of terrorism”: they claim that houses were hit by Ukrainian bombs, killing at least seven people.
Bordering the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, the Kherson region is largely in Russian hands. The Ukrainians have been leading a counter-offensive there for several weeks while the bulk of Moscow’s forces are deployed in the Donbass mining region in the east of the country. Ukrainian military intelligence also said on Tuesday that it had released, during a “special operation”, five people, including a soldier and a former policeman, “kept in captivity by the Russian occupiers” in the region.
Also in the southern part of Ukraine, the Russians carried out “massive” missile strikes on Mykolaiv very early on Tuesday, hitting two medical establishments and apartment buildings, according to the mayor of this city, Oleksandre Senkevych. At least 19 Smerch and Tornado missiles were fired, said regional governor Vitaly Kim, who said 12 were injured.
The Russian army, for its part, said it destroyed a Harpoon system with an Iskander missile in Berezan, in the Odessa region, also in the south, as well as military units and ammunition depots in the Mykolaiv region. .
“We cannot run away from war”
In eastern Ukraine, kyiv expects a new Russian offensive in the Donetsk region, forming the Donbass – partially controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists – with that of Lugansk, which the Russians claim to have completely seized.
The death toll from the Russian bombardment of an apartment building in Chassiv Iar, in the same mining basin, has risen to at least 41 on Sunday, according to Ukrainian relief.
In Bakhmout, another locality in the Donetsk region, artillery fire was heard Tuesday in an almost deserted city center. “You can’t run away from war and you never know where it will find you,” simply summed up Lyoubov Mojayeva, a 60-year-old agronomist who went to get some food in the city’s former cultural center. “The front is getting closer,” notes, resigned, Dmytro Podkuyidko, a town hall official.
Meeting in Turkey
On the diplomatic level, a meeting between Russians and Ukrainians in the presence of UN representatives should open Wednesday in Turkey. It will discuss the difficult issue of grain exports via the Black Sea, against a background of increased financial aid from Westerners to kyiv.
Russia confirmed this meeting, while emphasizing that it wanted in particular to keep “the possibility of controlling and searching ships to avoid the smuggling of weapons”. Ukraine, for its part, said it was “in favor of the settlement of the issue of the release of Ukrainian cereals under the auspices of the UN”.
Still on the diplomatic front, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday a bilateral meeting between Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Turkish Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose country is mediating between kyiv and Moscow, on the sidelines of a summit on Syria on July 19. in Tehran with their Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi.
Arms and aid deliveries
At the same time, according to Washington, Iran is preparing to deliver “hundreds of drones” to Russia. In this context, the United States announced on Tuesday that it would provide an additional 1.7 billion dollars in aid to kyiv. This should bring to 4 billion the total sums paid by the Americans for the Ukrainians since the outbreak of the war on February 24.
In Brussels, the finance ministers of the Member States of the European Union gave the green light to the disbursement of one billion euros to Ukraine, bringing the total to 2.2 billion euros their financial assistance to kyiv since the beginning of the conflict. The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, for his part pointed out that around 13.8 billion euros of Russian assets have been frozen in the EU as part of the sanctions against the regime of Vladimir Putin.