“Heavy fighting” erupted in southern Ukraine on Tuesday where kyiv troops launched a counter-offensive, hoping to retake the city of Kherson from the Russians.
“Powerful explosions took place all day (Monday) and all night in the Kherson region. Heavy fighting is taking place on almost the entire territory of the region,” the Ukrainian presidency said in its morning briefing.
In Bereznehuvate, a town in the rear front 70 km north of Kherson, many soldiers are resting under the constant passage of armored vehicles, AFP noted, while numerous artillery fire echoes in the surroundings.
Some are on their way to the front, like this small group of soldiers waiting for their T74 tank, whose engine is overheating, to be repaired. Others come back and rest.
“We got them well in,” says Victor, an infantryman in his sixties who doesn’t want to say more. Its commander, Oleksandre, veteran of Afghanistan, affirms that the reconquest of Kherson will be “long and complicated”.
Ukraine is taking back what is hers and will eventually take back everything — the regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Crimea, the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov
cut supply
“The Ukrainian armed forces have launched offensive actions in various directions,” continued the Ukrainian presidency, claiming to have destroyed “a number of ammunition depots” and “all major bridges” allowing vehicles to cross the Dnieper river, in order to cut off supplies to the Russian army from Crimea annexed by Moscow in 2014.
According to a memo from the British MoD, “most (Russian) units around Kherson are probably undermanned and have to rely on fragile supplies by ferry and pontoon bridges.”
The Ukrainian counter-attack is essentially aimed at retaking Kherson – a city of 280,000 inhabitants before the conflict – taken by the Russians at the start of the war on February 24, according to local officials.
Deputy Sergei Khlan spoke on Ukrainian television of “powerful artillery attacks on enemy positions […] throughout the territory of the occupied Kherson region”.
Russia for its part claimed on Monday to have repelled Ukrainian “offensive attempts” in the regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine.
According to a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense published on Tuesday, “due to the failure of the Ukrainian offensive […] the enemy suffered heavy losses”, that is “1200 Ukrainian soldiers in one day”, as well as dozens of military vehicles.
According to the “South” command of the Ukrainian army, the Russians bombarded Mykolaiv on Monday with 16 anti-aircraft missiles S-300 which caused “significant” damage, particularly to residential buildings. Two civilians were killed and 24 injured, according to this source.
This information was unverifiable from independent sources.
“Ukraine is taking back what is hers and will take back everything eventually – the regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Crimea, the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov” , Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hammered Monday evening in his daily message.
The Russian bombardments have also not ceased on the front line which extends from north to south.
In the center of Kharkiv (northeast), Ukraine’s second largest city, at least five people were killed in Russian bombardments, the mayor and regional governor announced on Tuesday.
Nuclear risk
Governor of the Zaporizhia region (south) Oleksandre Staroukh announced at dawn on Tuesday that Russia had launched an attack with missiles against the eponymous city. There were no casualties or significant damage, according to the same source.
It is in this region that experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are expected to inspect the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, occupied since the beginning of March by the Russians and at the center of all tensions.
The UN organization sent a mission, led by its director general Rafael Grossi, to Zaporijjia, to visit the facilities “later this week”.
Mr. Grossi had been asking for several months to be able to go there, warning of the “real risk of nuclear disaster” after a series of bombings for which the two belligerents rejected responsibility.
Accused by kyiv of having positioned artillery pieces on the site of the power plant, Russia said on Tuesday “hope that this mission will take place”, through the voice of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “We are waiting for it,” he added.
The Ukrainian operator Energoatom nevertheless claimed that the Russian soldiers “put pressure on the staff of the plant to prevent them from revealing evidence of the occupier’s crimes”.
In addition, the Ukrainian authorities were preparing for the start of the school year scheduled for Thursday. In kyiv, 132,000 children are expected in classes on September 1, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
In addition, as autumn approaches, a further step towards the drying up of Russian gas flows to France was taken on Tuesday with the announcement by the Engie group of a further reduction in deliveries from the giant Gazprom.
Deliveries of Russian gas to the French energy company Engie had already fallen since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, falling recently to just 1.5 TWh (terawatt-hour) per month.
For its part, Germany is “in a better position” to counter the threat of Russian gas, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Meanwhile, a UN-chartered ship carrying 23,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat bound for Ethiopia, where millions of people are suffering from hunger, arrived at the port of Djibouti on Tuesday, the World Food Program (WFP) said. ).