Russia continues to pressure Ukraine, both on the battlefield and with air strikes. Moscow announced this Wednesday that its forces had reached military infrastructure in response to Ukrainian attacks against its refineries. Kyiv denounced another “massive” attack against its energy network in which, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russians used more than 50 missiles and more than 20 drones.
On the ground, Russian troops are advancing to control ground communications in the regions of Kharkiv (northeast Ukraine) and Donetsk (east). The Russian Ministry of Defense reported in its latest statement the capture of two towns, one in each territorial demarcation.
According to the ministry, the “West” group, which operates in the Kharkiv region, “has improved its situation in its vanguard,” taking the town of Kislivka.
This small town (965 inhabitants before the conflict) is located 27 kilometers southeast of Kupiansk, a city (26,000 inhabitants) towards which Russian forces have been trying to advance for months. The railway line that connects Kupiansk with the cities of Svátovo and Popasnaya passes through Kislivka, in the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk, annexed by Moscow in September 2022 and almost entirely under Russian military control.
At the same time, in the Donetsk region, Russian troops took the town of Novokalínove (520 inhabitants before the war), a town west of Ocherétine (4,500), which the Russian Ministry of Defense declared taken on May 5. Located northwest of the regional capital Donetsk and separated by 25 kilometers, the Ocherétine train station is on the railway lines that link Donetsk with Pokrovsk, an important city before the conflict (60,000 inhabitants), whose occupation can help the Russians to control this entire region.
The attack with missiles and drones, in the early hours of this Wednesday, hit almost a dozen energy facilities in six Ukrainian regions. The air offensive caused “serious damage” to three Soviet-era thermal power plants, Ukrainian authorities said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had used long-range weapons launched from its ships and bombers. Among them were high-precision weapons such as the Kinzhal hypersonic missile systems.
Russia hit Ukrainian power grid facilities and military industry facilities. “As a result of the attack, Ukraine’s ability to produce military equipment and to transport Western weapons and military equipment to the line of contact has been significantly reduced,” that department said.
This latest attack has been a response “to the Kyiv regime’s attempts to damage Russian energy facilities,” he added.
In this sense, the pro-Russian authorities in Luhansk reported Ukrainian attacks against a fuel depot in the regional capital. “Five warehouse workers were injured and hospitalized,” the entity’s leader, Leonid Pásechnik, wrote on Telegram.
The attack caused a large fire and also burned a high-pressure gas pipeline, causing a power outage to homes in the area, he added.
Pasechnik assumes that the Ukrainians used American ATACMS missiles.
