The enemy is trying to gain full control of the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway, said Luhansk Governor Serhiy Hajday. But Russian troops would not succeed and would “die in large numbers”. The situation in Severodonetsk cannot be compared to that of Mariupol because the city can still be supplied “with everything needed”. According to the Ukrinform news agency, Hajdaj said the civilians hiding there would refuse to leave the Asot chemical plant.
According to Ukrainian sources, a gas plant in the Izyum district was hit by Russian rockets. A huge fire has started and rescue teams are mobilized, wrote the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Synyehubov. In addition to the factory, houses were also affected. No information was given about the victims in this case. It is said that a fuel depot was hit in Novomoskovsk, in eastern Ukraine.
According to local authorities, rockets landed in the city of Kryvji Rih, in central Ukraine. Authorities announced on the short message service Telegram that there were at least two victims. A neighborhood in the south of the city was hit. Kryvyi Rih is located in the Dnipropetrovsk region. On the other hand, separatists in Donetsk reported that civilians were killed and wounded by artillery shelling of the city.
Russian troops destroyed oil tankers in a rocket attack near the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Saturday. The regional administration reported that three rockets hit the depot in Novomokovsk district. “There is a strong fire,” wrote the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Resnichenko, on Telegram. Three people were taken to hospital with burns. In all, eleven people were injured.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Mykolaiv and Odessa regions in the south of the country. A video posted on his Telegram channel on Saturday shows Zelensky inspecting ruins in Mykolayiv and handing out medals after a briefing. The state news agency Ukrinform later reported that the president also visited National Guard forts in the Odessa region. He also decorated state officials there.
Ukraine is preparing for a protracted defensive war against Russia. Only at the end of August, after counterattacks, the Ukrainian chief negotiator David Arakhamija wants to resume peace talks with Moscow, as he said in an interview with the Voice of America broadcaster on Saturday. Then your country will have a better negotiating position.
Russia has once again lost a ship in its Black Sea fleet to attacks by the Ukrainian military. The tugboat “Vasily Bech” was damaged by Ukrainian missiles. “It later became known that he sank,” Odessa’s military governor Maxym Marchenko said in a video speech on his Telegram channel. There is no confirmation from Russian or independent sources. According to Ukrainian sources, the ship, which was commissioned in 2017 and equipped with a Tor air defense system, was hit by Harpoon missiles. Denmark supplied the anti-ship missiles to Ukraine.
According to a high-ranking general, the Ukrainian army has suffered heavy material losses since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. “So far, as a result of active fighting, we have about 30 to 40, sometimes even 50 percent, equipment losses,” Brigadier General Volodymyr Karpenko told the American magazine “National Defense”. “An estimated 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles, 400 tanks and 700 artillery systems were lost.”