Ukrainian president says Russian forces continue to focus operations in direction of city of Pokrovsk after two villages were capturedUkrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said fighting in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine is “extremely challenging” and that Russian forces have continued to focus most of their offensive operations in the area in the direction of Pokrovsk.Zelenskiy said in his evening address:It is extremely challenging in the Donetsk directions, and it is in the Pokrovsk direction that there have been the biggest number of Russian assaults these weeks – the most intense enemy attacks are precisely there.Everyone who stops these Russian strikes and destroys this Russian offensive potential is performing one of the most important missions in this war.Ukraine air defence systems destroyed one guided air missile and nine out of the 10 attack drones that Russia launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Monday.Kyiv launched more than two dozen drones on the Russian region of Kursk in several waves of attacks that started Saturday night and damaged an oil depot, Russian officials said on Monday. Nineteen drones launched from Ukraine were destroyed by Russia’s air defence systems overnight, Russia’s defence ministry wrote on Telegram. That follows 19 drones that Andrei Smirnov, Kursk’s governor, said defence systems destroyed over the region on Sunday.A utility infrastructure facility in the Voronezh region caught fire briefly from the falling debris of a destroyed Ukraine-launched drone, the governor of the southwestern Russian region that borders Ukraine said on Monday. The fire was quickly extinguished.Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west. The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Nato and European defence, Washington and Germany said earlier this month. “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said in a speech to sailors on Sunday. “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Ukraine in August, various Indian media outlets have reported in recent days, which would be his first visit to the country since Russia invaded in February 2022 and would come just weeks after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had expressed unhappiness and disappointment with Modi’s visit to Russia. India has refrained from directly criticising Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, while urging the two nations to resolve their conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.Ukrainians urged their government to do more to get Russia to release prisoners of war, voicing their anger on Sunday at a ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50. Several thousand soldiers and civilians gathered at Kyiv’s Independence Square to commemorate the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50 Ukrainians that Russia was holding in the Olenivka prison barracks. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jul/29/russia-ukraine-war-live-fighting-in-donetsk-region-is-extremely-challenging-says-zelenskiy
Author : Yohannes Lowe
Publish date : 2024-07-29 07:43:05
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Russia-Ukraine war live: fighting in Donetsk region is ‘extremely challenging’, says Zelenskiy
