Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russian authorities reported on Saturday that they shot down Ukrainian drones in Crimea, while Ukrainian officials said Russian forces have stepped up efforts to seize one of the few cities in eastern Ukraine not yet under theirs are out of control, and their strikes continued in communities north and south.
In Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian authorities said local air defenses shot down a drone over the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It was the second drone incident at headquarters in three weeks, followed by explosions at a Russian airfield and a peninsular ammunition depot earlier this month.
An adviser to Crimea’s governor Oleg Kryuchkov also said Saturday that “small drone attacks” triggered air defense systems in western Crimea. He didn’t elaborate. Russia now considers Crimea Russian territory, particularly after a huge bridge was built from mainland Russia to the peninsula, but Ukrainian officials have never accepted its annexation by Russia.
Mikhail Razvozhaev, the governor of Sevastopol, the Crimean city where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based, said the drone shot down there fell on the roof of the fleet’s headquarters and caused no injuries or major damage.
But the incident underscored the vulnerability of Russian forces in Crimea. A drone strike on the Black Sea headquarters on July 31 injured five people and forced the cancellation of Russian Navy Day celebrations.
A Russian ammunition depot in Crimea was hit by an explosion this week. Last week, nine Russian fighter jets were destroyed at an airbase in Crimea.
The Ukrainian authorities have stopped publicly acknowledging responsibility. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea, which Russia accuses of “sabotage”.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern Ukrainian areas north of Crimea has increased in recent weeks as Ukrainian forces try to push Russian forces out of towns they have held since the beginning of the six-month war.
The story goes on
Russian shelling injured at least nine people and damaged houses and a block of flats in the town of Voznesensk in the Mykolaiv region, region governor Vitaliy Kim said on Saturday.
A Ukrainian airstrike hit targets in Melitopol, the largest Russian-controlled city in the Zaporizhia region, 100 kilometers (65 miles) north of Crimea, according to Ukrainian and Russian-installed local officials.
Ukraine’s Military General Staff said on Saturday intensified fighting was taking place around Bakhmut, a small town whose capture would allow Russia to threaten the two largest remaining Ukrainian-held towns in the eastern Donbass region.
Bakhmut has been a key target of Moscow’s eastern offensive for weeks as the Russian military tries to complete a months-long campaign to seize all of Donbass, where pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed two republics that Russia recognized as sovereign states at the start of the war.
A local Ukrainian official on Saturday reported ongoing fighting near four settlements on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which together make up the contested Donbass region. Luhansk Governor Serhii Haidai did not name the settlements. Russian forces overran most of Luhansk last month and have since focused on capturing the Ukrainian-held areas of Donetsk.
Russian shelling killed seven civilians in Donetsk province on Friday, including four in Bakhmut, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram on Saturday. Taking Bakhmut would give the Russians room to advance into the province’s main Ukrainian cities, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Sloviansk and Kramatorsk were targeted on Friday, along with the northern Kharkiv region, home to Ukraine’s second largest city.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv have commented on the airstrike on Melitopol, but the head of the Russian-installed administration in Melitopol, Galina Danilchenko, confirmed on Saturday that the city had come under Ukrainian shelling.
Ukrainian Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Ferodov said local Ukrainian authorities were collecting information about the strike.
“Tonight there were powerful explosions in Melitopol, which the whole city heard,” Ferodov said. “According to preliminary data, (it) was a precise hit on one of the Russian military bases, which the Russian fascists want to restore on the airfield site for the umpteenth time.”
Ukrainian officials have hinted at plans for a counter-offensive to retake the occupied territories in the south, while Russia is mainly focused on the east.
Local authorities reported renewed Russian shelling overnight along a broad front, including the northern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, which border Russia, and the eastern regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv.
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Kozlowska reported from London.
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