Ukraine said on Tuesday it had launched a long-range rocket attack against Russian forces and military equipment in the southern Ukraine region. It says it plans to withdraw in a counter-attack using hundreds of thousands of troops.
Ukraine’s military said the attack hit an ammunition pile in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region and killed 52 people. It came as Washington supplied Ukraine with the advanced HIMARS mobile artillery system, which Kyiv says its military is using with increasing efficiency.
The city’s Russia-founded officials gave a different version of events. Russian TASS news agencies reported that they said at least seven people were killed and about 70 were injured in the attack. A Russian-backed official in Kherson said at least seven people had been killed and civilians and civilian infrastructure had been damaged.
Reuters could not independently confirm the Battlefield accounts.
The area Ukraine struck is one that Russia seized on February 24 after launching what Moscow called “a special military operation” in its fellow former Soviet neighbor and access to the Black Sea, a once thriving agriculture. Industry and with a location is of strategic importance. In the north of Crimea, annexed to Russia.
Ukrainian government officials have spoken of efforts to marshal a million soldiers and their aim to take back the southern parts of the country now under Russian control.
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“Based on the results of our rocket and artillery units, the enemy lost 52 (people), one Msta-B howitzer, one mortar and seven armored and other vehicles, as well as one ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka,” Ukraine’s Southern Military Command said in a statement.
An unverified video posted on social media showed smoke and sparks, followed by a huge ball of fire in the night sky. Images released by Russian state media showed a barren land covered in rubble and the remains of buildings.
A Russian-backed local administration official said Ukraine had used HIMARS missiles and destroyed warehouses containing saltpeter, a chemical compound that can be used to make fertilizer or gunpowder. There was a big bang. Russia’s TASS news agency later reported that the fire had been extinguished.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the type of weapon used.
Vladimir Leontyev, head of the Kakhovka district military-civilian administration established by Russia, said: “Many people are still buried under the rubble. The injured are being taken to hospitals, but many are locked up in their apartments and homes. ” TASS is saying. He said warehouses, shops, a pharmacy, gas station and a church were damaged.
counter attack plan
The conflict has blocked Ukraine’s access to grain and cooking oil, triggering a global food crisis. More than 20 million tonnes of grain is stuck in silos at Odessa’s major Black Sea port.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said military delegations from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey will meet UN officials in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss a possible deal to resume safe exports of Ukrainian grain.
“We are working really hard but there is still a way to go,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.
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As Russia blocked Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports, Ukraine’s Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuri Vaskov said grain shipments increased via the Danube River, which reopened the Bistre Canal, which serves as a small port. The inland river provides access to the ports.
Vaskov said Ukraine expected this to result in an increase in monthly grain exports by 500,000 tonnes. He added that Ukraine is also in talks with Romania and the European Commission to increase shipments through the Sulina Canal.
Russia has accused Ukraine of shelling its own people in areas where it has lost control. Ukraine says it is evacuating as many people as possible from territories seized by the Russian military, which it and the West have cast as an imperialist-style land grab by Moscow.
Kyiv and the West say Russia’s own attacks have been indiscriminate, killing civilians and leveling the city’s districts.
Moscow denies targeting civilians, but many Ukrainian population centers are left in ruins as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II grinds to the five-month mark.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that 5,024 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the attack began and the actual number is likely to be much higher. read more
Russia has tried to introduce the ruble in Kherson and is offering Russian passports to locals. Russian-founded officials say they also plan to hold a referendum on the region becoming part of Russia, but have not yet set a date.
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Ukraine itself is prepared for what it expects to be a massive new Russian offensive in the east, where Moscow says it is determined to take control of all of the industrial Donbass region.
Russian forces, which completed the capture of Luhansk province in the Donbass earlier this month, have been shelling parts of neighboring Donetsk province for weeks.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said there had been a significant build-up of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Siversky regions, and around Slovak and Kramatorsk.
He said the entire front line in the area was under constant fire as Russian troops tried to break in but were driven away.
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