Ukraine has reported that Russia has launched 39 airstrikes, 4 missile strikes, and 42 attacks from multiple rocket launchers over the last day. Governor Oleh Prokudin claims that one person was killed and two were wounded during shelling of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Saturday. Further north, a 32-year-old police investigator was killed and two other people were wounded when shells hit the town of Seredyna-Buda in the Sumy region.
Maritime officials say a pair of cargo vessels departed Ukraine on Saturday despite Russian warnings and are now in the Black Sea. The Anna-Theresa, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier carrying 56,000 tons of pig iron, left the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny on Friday and is now close to Bulgarian territorial waters. A second vessel, the Ocean Courtesy, is said to have left the same port on Friday with 172,000 tons of iron ore concentrate. That ship arrived at the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta shortly before noon on Saturday.
The ships are only the third and fourth vessels which have used the interim corridor established by Ukraine’s government after Russia halted a wartime agreement aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from Ukraine. The boats had previously been docked in Ukrainian Black Sea ports since before Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
On Saturday, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov confirmed two civilians had been wounded and another killed following an attack by two Ukrainian drones on the region’s Valuysky district. It’s been reported that another drone was intercepted by Russian air defence forces in the Grayvoronsky district. Ukrainian authorities generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil and haven’t said whether or not they launched the attacks. Drone strikes and shelling on the Russian border regions are a regular occurrence.
Moscow claims to have shot down three Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea during the night from Friday to Saturday which were targeting the Crimean bridge. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian drones were destroyed around 2:20 a.m. Moscow time before reaching the bridge, built in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Before the most recent offensive, supposedly foiled by Moscow, Kyiv claimed a symbolic victory on Friday by claiming to have carried out its first drone attack this week from Russian territory. They say, during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, Ukrainian drones targeted the airport in the city of Pskov, some 700 kilometres from Ukraine, in a region bordering Estonia and Latvia to the west and Belarus to the south. Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov confirmed the incident via Telegram, saying, “The drones used to attack the Kresty air base in Pskov were launched from inside Russia”.
The US government says Ukraine’s forces have made „notable progress” in their push against heavily fortified Russian positions in the south of the country. John Kirby, the White House security spokesman, explained that those gains were made over the past 72 hours south of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed that Kyiv’s forces were advancing, but that „it’s a tough fight.” In response, Kyiv has continued to urge Nato countries to provide them with tanks, warplanes, and de-mining equipment, perhaps most notably US-made F-16 fighter jets.
