Moscow.The news from the battlefields on Wednesday showed little change since Ukrainian troops crossed the border three weeks ago and took the war to the Kursk region: the Russians advanced a few hundred meters towards their most important objective today, the town of Pokrovsk, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk, and the latter continued to strengthen their positions in occupied Russian territory.
Meanwhile, news agencies reported on several isolated incidents that occurred on Wednesday and that, by themselves, do not alter the course of this armed conflict for better or worse: Kiev continued its strategy of damaging fuel depots and refineries in areas of Russia far from the border with drones, and Moscow continued to launch missiles, drones and guided bombs from planes against cities in Ukraine.
Ukrainian media have released the first images of drones hitting a fuel depot in the Kirov region, the first Ukrainian attack in that Russian zone 1,100 kilometres from the border, and a refinery in the Rostov region, which caused major fires, confirmed by the respective governors.
At the other end of Rostov, an earlier drone attack on a large refinery caused a fire that, ten days later, remains unextinguished, according to news agencies.
Russia responded with bombings of Ukrainian cities, the most serious of which took place on Wednesday when a guided bomb destroyed an administrative building in the centre of the city of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.
At around 1 a.m. on Thursday (today), sirens went off in the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Nikolaev, Kirovograd, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Sumy and Kharkiv when anti-aircraft defense detected the flight path of between 30 and 40 drones launched by Russia, in what Ukrainian media anticipate will be another tense night with hours spent in shelters.
The commander of the Ukrainian army’s ground forces, Oleksandr Pavliuk, wrote on his Telegram account that “our air defense units once again demonstrated their expertise by shooting down a Su-25 fighter-bomber near the city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk, which according to the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN would be the second aircraft of this type that Russia has lost since the end of last July.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has not commented on such news, but bloggers who support the so-called “special military operation” have questioned Pavliuk’s words.
The Telegram channel Operation Z – Envoys of the Russian Spring He claims that the fighter-bomber was not shot down, but that when attacked it “released thermal traps” that the Ukrainians “presented in an incomplete video as part of the explosion” of the plane. Within a few days, evidence will appear that confirms one version or another.
On the other hand, the Russian authorities, taking into account the recommendations of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who inspected the Kursk nuclear power plant in Kurchatovo on Tuesday, decided to “temporarily prohibit access” to this city because “Ukrainian troops do not give up their attempt to enter Kurchatovo,” reported the governor of Kursk, Aleksei Smirnov.
His colleague from the neighbouring Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, decided to evacuate all residents of four towns and announced that in all municipalities within 20 kilometres of the border “schools will conduct classes remotely”.
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– 2024-09-07 02:48:02
