Russia steps up aerial strikes, killing at least 6 amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight and shelled the eastern Donetsk region early Wednesday, killing at least six people and damaging dozens of homes, regional officials said.
Russian forces have stepped up aerial strikes in their nearly 16-month war, a Ukrainian military spokesman said, while the country’s armed forces have reported limited gains in the early stages of a counteroffensive to take back the nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory that is under Russian control.
The grinding Ukrainian advance is pressing slowly ahead, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Wednesday. Western analysts and military officials say the effort to dislodge entrenched, powerfully armed Russian troops could take years.
Ukrainian troops have advanced up to 1,600 feet at various sections of the front line around the devastated Donetsk city of Bakhmut and up to 1,150 feet in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Maliar said. Ukrainian forces have managed to make gains despite the Russian edge in artillery and air power, she said.
Maliar noted that, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield had been “incomparably smaller” than those of Russian troops. It was not possible to verify the battlefield claims.
Ukrainian forces can expect to make slow progress in what will be a “hugely difficult” fight as the counteroffensive gains traction, a Western official said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
“Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front,” the official said. “This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone.”
The official described the Ukrainian attacks as methodical and said that, broadly speaking, “Russian forces have put up a good defense.”
In Odesa, three food warehouse employees were killed in a strike that also damaged homes, shops and cafes in the city’s downtown, the regional administration said on Facebook. An additional 13 people were wounded.
Search teams were looking for possible survivors under the rubble of the warehouse, it said.
The attack on the port city, launched from the Black Sea, was the second in a week and involved four Kalibr cruise missiles, three of which were intercepted by air defenses, the administration said.
In the east, Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram that at least three people died after shelling destroyed seven homes and damaged dozens more in the cities of Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka.
The United Nations’ cultural agency has added the historic center of Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa to the list of endangered World Heritage sites.
Ten towns and villages along the front line in Donetsk were struck as Kyiv’s troops slowly advanced, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.
A missile hit the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kramatorsk, where Kyiv’s forces are headquartered, killing two civilians and wounding two others while damaging 29 homes, the presidential office said. Russian shelling of Kostiantynivka killed one civilian, with 57 houses damaged, it added.
Andriy Kovalov, a spokesperson for the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the Russian military increased missile and aerial strikes as Kyiv’s forces intensified attacks along the 600-mile front line and claimed modest gains at the beginning of their counteroffensive.
In a briefing, he said strikes on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kirovohrad regions, in addition to the Odesa region, involved Kh-22 cruise missiles, sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles and Iranian-made Shahed drones. Nine were intercepted.
The Biden administration has provided more than $37.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Kovalov said Ukrainian forces made advances on several fronts and fighting was continuing in or near at least two communities in Donetsk province.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense, which has regularly issued updates on the conflict, wrote on Twitter that southern Ukraine “has often been more permissible for Russian air operations” compared with other parts of the front.
Separately, the mayor of the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, said the death toll from a Russian strike that hit an apartment building a day earlier had risen to 12.
Ukrainian authorities continued to rescue people from the flooded areas of southern Ukraine’s partially Russian-occupied Kherson region after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam last week.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine is swiftly evolving into a long-term environmental catastrophe.
A total of 28 settlements on the Ukrainian-held western bank of the Dnipro River remain underwater, and nearly 2,800 people have been taken to safety so far, the presidential office said, adding that the rescue effort was taking place under relentless Russian shelling. Ukraine’s prosecutor general said two volunteers were wounded Wednesday in Russian shelling of the regional capital, also called Kherson, while attempting to evacuate people.
A visit by Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Wednesday was postponed for security reasons.
He met with Zelensky on Tuesday to discuss the perils facing the nuclear plant, which grew more serious after the Kakhovka dam burst.
The plant has been in the crossfire repeatedly since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022 and seized the facility shortly after.
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