ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Regions of southern Ukraine illegally annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin saw fiercer fighting Saturday as Ukrainian soldiers pushed a ground campaign to retake one and Russian forces in another long-range missile and Iran manufactured drones exploded.
A rocket attack also severely damaged a key power facility in Ukraine’s capital region, the country’s grid operator said.
After mounting setbacks, the Russian military has been working to shut off power and water in distant populated areas while repelling Ukrainian counterattacks in occupied areas.
Dmytro Pocishchuk, a hospital doctor in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital who has treated dozens of people wounded in Russian attacks in recent weeks, said people sought safety outside or in the basement of his building when the well-known blasts on Saturday started at 5:15 a.m.
“If Ukraine stops, these bombings and killings will continue. We cannot give up the Russian Federation,'” Pocishchuk said a few hours later.
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He taped a small Ukrainian flag to the broken windshield of his badly damaged car.
Dmytro Pocishchuk checks his car, which was damaged after a Russian attack in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, October 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Russia has lost ground in the nearly seven weeks since Ukrainian forces opened their southern counteroffensive.
This week the Kremlin launched what is believed to be its largest coordinated air and missile strike since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Kyiv Region Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said the rocket that hit a power plant on Saturday morning did not kill or injure anyone.
Citing security, Ukrainian officials did not identify the site, one of many infrastructure targets the Russian military was attempting to destroy after an Oct. 8 truck bomb blast damaged the bridge linking Russia to the annexed Crimea peninsula.
Ukraine’s power transmission company Ukrenergo said repair teams are working to restore power but warned residents of more possible outages.
A man crosses a pedestrian bridge at dusk on Friday, October 14, 2022 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, urged residents of the capital and three neighboring regions to save energy.
“Putin can hope to increase the misery of the Ukrainian people, President [Volodymyr] Zelensky may be more inclined to negotiate a deal that allows Russia to keep a stolen territory in the east or Crimea,” said Ian Williams, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based political organization. “A quick look at history shows that the strategic bombing of civilians is an ineffective way to achieve a political goal. ”
Dozens have been killed in widespread retaliatory attacks this week, which have included the use of self-destructing drones from Iran.
The strikes hit residential buildings as well as infrastructure facilities such as power plants in Kyiv, Lviv in western Ukraine and other cities that had seen comparatively few strikes in recent months.
A damaged skyscraper at the site of the Russian shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, October 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Putin said on Friday that Moscow saw no need for more massive strikes, but that his military would continue with selective ones. He said that of 29 targets the Russian military intended to take out in this week’s attacks, seven were undamaged and were being taken out one by one.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, interpreted Putin’s remarks as wanting to counter criticism from pro-war Russian bloggers who “broadly praised the resumption of strikes against Ukrainian cities but warned that a short campaign would be ineffective.”
In the Zaporizhia region, Governor Oleksandr Starukh said the Russian military carried out attacks using Iranian-made kamikaze drones and long-range S-300 missiles.
Some experts said the Russian military’s use of surface-to-air missiles may reflect a lack of specialized precision weapons to hit ground targets.
A wrecked car is seen next to a crater caused by an explosion following a Russian attack in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, October 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The neighboring Kherson region, one of the first areas of Ukraine to fall to Russia after the invasion and which Putin also illegally designated as Russian territory last month, remained the focus of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The Kyiv Army has reported retaking 75 villages and towns there over the past month, but said momentum has slowed as fighting adjusted to the kind of back-and-forth attrition that fueled Russia’s months-long offensive to capture characterized the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine.
On Saturday, Ukrainian troops attempted to advance south along the banks of the Dnieper towards the region’s capital, also known as Kherson, but failed to gain ground, according to Kirill Stremousov, a deputy head of the Moscow-installed administration of the occupied region.
“The defense lines worked and the situation remained under the full control of the Russian army,” he wrote on his messaging app channel.
A Ukrainian soldier checks trenches dug by Russian soldiers in a retaken area in Kherson region, Ukraine, Oct. 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Kremlin-backed local leaders on Thursday urged civilians to evacuate the region to ensure their safety and give Russian troops more maneuverability.
Stremousov reminded them they could evacuate to Crimea and cities in south-west Russia, where Moscow offered free housing to residents who agreed to go.
Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said the military had destroyed five crossings on the Inhulets River, another route that Ukrainian fighters could take to advance into the Kherson region.
Konashenkov claimed Russian troops also blocked Ukrainian attempts to breach Russian defenses near Lyman, a town in eastern Ukraine’s annexed Donetsk region, which Ukrainians recaptured two weeks ago in a significant defeat for the Kremlin.
A car damaged by shrapnel is seen in a parking lot after a Russian attack in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, October 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Two civilians were killed by Russian shelling north and east of Kherson in the Dnepropetrovsk region, Governor Valentyn Resnichenko said.
He said the shelling of the town of Nikopol, across the Dnieper from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, damaged a dozen residential buildings, several shops and a transport facility.
Fighting near the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was an ongoing problem throughout the nearly eight-month war.
The power plant momentarily lost its last remaining external power source twice in the past week, stoking fears the reactors could eventually overheat and cause a catastrophic radiation leak.
A view of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia region, in an area under Russian military control in southeastern Ukraine, May 1, 2022. (AP)
The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, reported that such fears were allayed somewhat late Friday because, after several weeks, Ukrainian engineers had managed to restore emergency power lines that can act as a “buffer” in the event of further war-related outages.
“The operating staff of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant works in very difficult conditions and does everything possible to strengthen the fragile external power supply situation,” Grossi said. “The restoration of the emergency power connection is a positive step in this regard, even if the general nuclear safety situation remains precarious.”