Russian forces launched a rocket attack on the city of Zaporizhia in southern Ukraine last night: part of the infrastructure has been destroyed and there are casualties. The head of the military administration of the region of the same name, Oleksandr Starukh, and the speaker of the city council of the city, Anatolii Kurtieve, announced this by telegram. This is reported by Ukrainska Pravda. “The enemy launched a missile attack on the center of the region (the city of Zaporizhia, editor’s note). Information on the damage and casualties is being collected,” Starukh wrote. For his part, Kurtiev added that part of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed and there were casualties.
Russian forces have fired 11 rockets and 10 airstrikes against over 35 Ukrainian settlements in the last 24 hours, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reports on its Facebook page, according to UNIAN. “In the past 24 hours, the invaders have launched 11 rockets and 10 airstrikes, carried out more than 65 bombings with Mlrs – a statement said –. More than 35 settlements have suffered enemy attacks. Between them are Redkodub, Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Belogorovka, Bakhmut, Netaylove, Vodyanoye, Maryinka, Vremevka, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Zaliznichnoe and Mykolaiv”.
Kyiv forces’ control of the city of Lyman could prove to be a “key factor” in helping Ukraine regain lost territory in the nearby Lugansk region, Lugansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai reportedly told the Guardian. The recapture of Lyman, Gaidai stressed, represents Russia’s biggest loss of ground since Ukraine’s lightning-fast counteroffensive in northeast Kharkiv last month. Russian forces, the governor recalled, took Lyman in May and used it as a logistics and transportation center for operations in the north of Donetsk region. Lyman’s strategic importance, according to the British Ministry of Defense, lies in its command position at a road bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River, behind which Russia is trying to consolidate its defenses.
“To put it bluntly, who decides is one. Putin is not controlled. Having made the irresponsible decision to invade Ukraine, he may make another one. At the moment, however, I don’t see anything that leads me to believe that such a decision has already been made,” Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said in an interview with CNN, commenting on the Russian president’s nuclear threats. Austin condemned the “illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory” and called Putin’s threats to use “all available means” an “irresponsible statement…this nuclear saber-clash is not what we would expect leaders of big countries to have in their nuclear capabilities”.