Ukraine servicemen walk among sunflowers, to their position outside the town of Pokrovsk, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Military authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk on Friday (August 16, 2024) urged civilians to speed up their evacuation because the Russian army is quickly closing in on what has been one of Moscow’s key targets for months.

Pokrovsk officials said in a Telegram post that Russian troops are “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”

Ukrainian troops have been trying to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine by launching a bold cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Thursday (August 15, 2024) that Pokrovsk and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region were “facing the most intense Russian assaults.”

Goose, an aerial reconnaissance soldier with Ukraine’s 68th Separate Airborne Brigade who is helping defend the city, told The Associated Press by phone on Friday (August 16, 2024) that he faces the same deadly monotony every day: From his position, he flies a drone to identify moving Russian infantrymen. The boom of a mortar follows after he relays the coordinates. Then, more and more infantrymen come in a seemingly endless wave.

“Since the Kursk operation, I haven’t noticed any changes. The Russians have the same tactics of infantry assaults: They are moving, advancing,” said Goose, who spoke only using his call sign, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules. He noted that with their powerful aerial bombs, Russia was destroying any hope Ukrainians have of holding the territory. “Russians are destroying and moving, destroying and moving,” he said.

Also Read: Ukrainian Army Chief says his forces now control almost 1000 square kilometres of Russia’s Kursk region

The urgency of the evacuation of civilians from Pokrovsk has underscored the high-stakes gamble Ukraine is making by taking the war into Russia with its ongoing Kursk assault, which started Aug. 6.

The attack is a daring attempt to change the dynamics of the 2½-year conflict, but it could backfire and leave Ukraine’s shorthanded defense on the front line at the mercy of Russia’s push. The Kremlin’s forces have had battlefield momentum and superior forces in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region since the spring.

Ukraine is wagering it can cope with the strain on its resources involved in the attack in Kursk without sacrificing Donetsk. Russia apparently reckons it can contain the incursion without needing to ease up in Donetsk.

“Both cannot be right,” Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Thursday. “The outcome hangs in the balance.”

Russia’s slow slog across Donetsk this year has been costly in terms of troops and armor, but its gains have mounted.

Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes, and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

Pokrovsk officials were meeting with the residents to provide them with logistical details on the evacuation. People were offered shelter in western Ukraine, where they will be hosted in dormitories and separate houses prepared for them.

“As the front line approaches Pokrovsk, the need to move to a safer place is becoming increasingly urgent,” the local administration said.

In Kursk, meanwhile, Ukrainian troops have taken full control of Sudzha, Zelenskyy said Thursday. It’s the largest Russian town to fall to Ukraine’s forces since the start of their incursion 10 days ago, and the success raised Ukrainian spirits while embarrassing the Kremlin.

A family who fled from Sudzha showed on Russian state TV the shattered windows of their car, the result of an attack while on the road.

“At the turn they were shooting, there were mines, we drove around the mines. Then we were driving further, the drone hit us in Bondarevka,” said Nikolai Netbayev.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday the army repelled attempted Ukrainian advances in the areas of Gordeev, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Sudzha, and Russkoye Porechnoye, 13 kilometers (8 miles) north of Sudzha.

In other developments, the Russian organization People’s Front said two of its volunteer workers were killed by Ukrainian shelling in the Kursk region while on a mission to evacuate residents.

And in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, a hypermarket was destroyed in a blaze after being hit by Ukrainian fire, according to local officials. Eleven people were reported injured.

At least 15 people, including policemen and a priest, were killed and several others injured after unidentified gunmen opened fire at synagogues, churches, and a police post in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, the region’s governor said.

The simultaneous attacks occurred in Dagestan’s largest city of Makhachkala and in the coastal city of Derbent with Governor Sergei Melikov calling it a “terrorist attack”.

Officials said that the police personnel had killed four gunmen in Makhachkala and two in Derbent.

Melikov said that among the dead, in addition to the police officers, were several civilians, including an Orthodox priest who had worked in Derbent for more than 40 years.

“This evening in Derbent and Makhachkala unknown (attackers) made attempts to destabilise the situation in society,” Melikov wrote on Telegram.

“We know who is behind these terrorist attacks and what objective they are pursuing,” he added later, without specifying but referring to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We must understand that war comes to our homes too. We felt it, but today we face it,” he said.

Melikov said the “active phase” of operations in Derbent and Makhachkala had ended and that “six bandits have been liquidated”.

The authorities will try to find “all the members of these sleeper cells who prepared (the attacks) and who were prepared, including abroad”, he added.

He also said that June 24-26 have been declared days of mourning in Dagestan, with flags lowered to half-staff and all entertainment events cancelled.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened criminal probes over “acts of terror” in Dagestan. There, however, was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

Russia’s state media cited law enforcement as saying that among the attackers had been two sons of the head of central Dagestan’s Sergokala district, who had been detained.

In Derbent, authorities were quoted as saying that both the synagogue and church were set on fire.

The incident comes three months after 145 people were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State on a concert hall near Moscow, Russia’s worst terrorist attack in years.

People take shelter inside a metro station during a Russian military attack, amid Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, June 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Russia pummelled Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a large-scale drone and missile attack Saturday, injuring at least 19 people, local officials said.

The Ukrainian military reported that it had downed 35 out of the 53 missiles launched at targets across the country overnight on June 1, as well as 46 out of 47 attack drones.

Injuries were reported by officials across the country, including in Ukraine’s western Lviv region and the central Dnipropetrovsk region.

Twelve people, including eight children, were hospitalised after a strike close to two houses where they were sheltering in the Kharkiv region, said Governor Oleh Syniehubov.

The strikes were part of a series of sustained attacks by Russia against Ukraine’s power grid, which has been ongoing since March.

Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, DTEK said that two of its power plants had been seriously damaged in what it said was the sixth attack on the company’s plants in two and a half months.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Herman Halushchenko, said in a statement on social media that energy infrastructure in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovohrad and Ivano-Frankivsk regions had also been targeted.

Damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks has forced leaders of the war-ravaged country to institute nationwide rolling blackouts. Without adequate air defences to counter assaults and allow for repairs, the shortages could still worsen as need spikes in late summer and the bitter-cold winter.

In response to the strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated Kyiv’s need for additional air defense systems from its Western allies.

“Civilians, infrastructure and energy facilities. This is what Russia is constantly at war with,” he said in a post Saturday on X, formerly Twitter.

“Our partners know exactly what is needed for this. Additional Patriot and other modern air defence systems for Ukraine. Accelerating and expanding the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine. Providing our warriors with all the necessary capabilities.” Elsewhere, five civilians died amid Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, said the area’s Moscow-installed leader Denis Pushilin. Another three people were injured, he said.

The Russian Defence Ministry also said that it had shot down two Ukrainian drones on Saturday morning over Russia’s Belgorod region. No casualties were reported.