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| Russian Troops Start Launching Attacks on Two Main Cities in Eastern Ukraine (Gambar Ilustrasi) |
Kiev - Russian troops on Saturday (6/8/2022) began attacks on two main cities in the eastern Donetsk region and continued to carry out rocket attacks and shelling on other Ukrainian cities. The latest attacks include near Europe's largest nuclear power plant.
The two cities, Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered the main targets of Russia's ongoing offensive in eastern Ukraine. Analysts say Moscow needs to take control of Bakhmut if it is to advance in the regional hub of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
In the Donetsk direction, the enemy carried out offensive operations, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attacks and army flights," the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
The last Russian offensive in Sloviansk was July 30. But Ukrainian troops strengthened their positions around the city in the hope of renewed fighting. "I don't think it will settle down for long. Eventually, there will be attacks," Colonel Yurii Bereza, head of the National Guard Regiment, told The Associated Press.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 in the Donetsk region on the last day, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram. He also said two people were killed in Poprosny, and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy.
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after a Russian rocket fell in a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a town across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow forces seized it early in the war. “After midnight, Russian soldiers attacked the Nikopol area with Grad (Soviet era) rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery,” Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Another Russian missile strike overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without electricity.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation was becoming more dangerous by the day at the Zaporizhzhia plant. "Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated. What is at stake is very serious," he stressed.