(Kyiv) Ukraine has deployed reinforcements to the Chassiv Yar sector, a strategic city on the Eastern Front and a gateway to the major mining towns of Donbass, a combat unit said in a statement on Thursday.
Moscow is targeting this city, now in ruins, with the aim of making a breakthrough towards Kramatorsk, the main city still under Ukrainian control in the region, garrison of the Eastern Front.
“Units of the 24th Mechanized Brigade have been redeployed to reinforce the defense in the Chasiv Yar sector,” the brigade’s statement on Facebook said, admitting that “the situation in and around the city is extremely difficult.” .
The 24th Brigade explains “massively destroying the enemy”, but concedes “losses”.
Aerial video of the city posted Wednesday by Ukraine’s 225th Black Swan Assault Brigade on its Telegram channel showed a devastated town streaked with columns of smoke rising into the sky.
On the Eastern Front, a bombing left “two dead and three injured” on Friday in the town of Selydové, 60 km southeast of Chassiv Iar, the city administration said in a press release.
“This morning the Russians dropped a guided aerial bomb on the city, hitting a residential area. Five five-story buildings, six private houses,” said the head of the Donetsk region, Vadym Filachkin, calling on citizens to “evacuate.”
Since the fall, Russia has taken the initiative on the front, thanks to an understaffed Ukrainian army lacking ammunition.
On May 10, the Russians launched major ground assaults in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, making their largest territorial gains in 18 months before being held back by Ukrainian defenses.
According to Kyiv, the Russian army is suffering heavy losses, but with 700,000 military personnel deployed in the war zone, Moscow has a numerical advantage.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for a drone attack on several refineries in Russia on Friday, with Moscow claiming to have neutralized 114 Ukrainian drones overnight, notably targeting the southwest of the country, where one person was killed.
“On the night of June 21, drones attacked oil refineries in Afipski, Ilski, Krasnodar and Astrakhan,” four cities in southwest Russia, the Ukrainian General Staff said in a press release.
In addition, Kyiv claimed to have targeted a “storage and preparation area” for explosive drones “Shahed-136/Geranium-2”, models used by Moscow in attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have intercepted and destroyed 70 drones in annexed Crimea, 43 drones in the Krasnodar region and one drone in the Volgograd region overnight.
The Russian army also said it had destroyed six Ukrainian naval drones in the northwestern part of the Black Sea, according to the same source.
In the Krasnodar region, a drone attack damaged a boiler near the Yuzhny bus station, regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev said on Telegram.
“As a result of falling debris from a drone, a boiler employee was killed,” he added, denouncing a “massive attack by the criminal regime in Kyiv.”
In the Seversky district, several administrative buildings of an oil refinery were damaged, Kondratiev added.
Ukraine, faced with a Russian offensive for more than two years, regularly responds by attacking Russian regions and particularly targeting energy sites.
Kyiv had promised to bring the fighting to Russian soil in retaliation for the numerous bombings on its territory.
Ukraine is facing electricity shortages due to repeated massive Russian attacks on its civilian energy infrastructure.
