Kiev announced, on Sunday, that Russian missiles hit an airport near the city of Kropyvnitsky in central Ukraine.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, told a television channel that the Russian forces launched “six missiles and five attack drones,” according to Agence France-Presse.
He added, “Unfortunately, not all of them were destroyed. Of the six, the Air Force destroyed four, while two hit the airport near Kropivnitsky,” without providing additional details.
This comes in the wake of a Russian air attack in Dnipro, central Ukraine, on Saturday evening, killing a two-year-old girl and wounding 22 others, as announced by Ukrainian officials.
In the east of the country, the defenders of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut continue to press despite Russian forces declaring victory there after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war so far.
The sustained defense gives leaders in Moscow something else to think about before an expected Ukrainian counterattack.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hana Malyar, said Russia had sought to create an impression of calm around Bakhmut, but in reality artillery bombardment was still going on at levels comparable to those at the height of the battle for the city.
She stressed that the fighting is developing into a new phase.
Wearing her distinctive combat uniform during an interview from a military media center in Kiev, Malyar said, “The battle for control of the Bakhmut region has not stopped. It continues, and takes different forms.”
Russian forces are currently trying to expel the Ukrainian fighters from the heights overlooking Bakhmut, but they have failed so far, according to the Associated Press.
From the Kremlin’s point of view, the area around the city is part of the more than a thousand kilometers of front line that the Russian army must hold.
In a related context, Sergey Aksionov, who was appointed by Moscow as governor of Crimea, claimed that five drones were shot down over the city of Djankoy on the peninsula, and that four were jammed and did not hit their targets.
Aksionov added on the Telegram application that there were no casualties, but some windows were shattered in several houses.
He stated that an unexploded drone was found on the land of a house, which caused the temporary evacuation of 50 people from the area.
Russia seized and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in a unilateral move in 2014, and Russia has a military air base near Djankoy.
Ukrainian officials have been saying that the city of Djankoy and its surroundings has turned into Moscow’s largest military base in Crimea.
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2023-06-04 08:49:31
