Russia to ‘intensify’ attacks
Moscow yesterday ordered Russia’s army to ‘‘intensify’’ its attacks on Ukraine as missiles rained down across the country killing at least 16 civilians.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, was filmed visiting army commanders who have been fighting in Ukraine and also handing out medals.
‘‘The head of the Russian military department gave the necessary instructions to further intensify actions in all operational areas,’’ the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
The statement said that the order was given ‘‘to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions’’.
The instruction marks the official end of an ‘‘operational pause’’ that the Russian army in Donbas had taken since capturing the town of Lysychansk at the start of July, a conquest that secured the Kremlin’s control over the Luhansk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made capturing Donbas his priority in Ukraine and Luhansk makes up half of the region.
Western analysts have warned that the Russian army now intends to capture the Donetsk region towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the largest cities in Donbas not under its control.
The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said it expected a major assault in the next three days, even if exhausted and battered Russian soldiers haven’t been able to rest fully because the Russian military was under pressure to deliver victories to the Kremlin.
‘‘A 10-day-long operational pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations,’’ it said.
Despite the reported pause, fighting has been ongoing. In the embattled eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the last 24 hours in attacks on cities, its governor said yesterday.
Battles in Donbas have become attritional and heavily reliant on artillery.
Russia’s armies have made slow but steady progress by pounding towns with shells and then sending in its infantry to capture them.
Ukrainian troops reportedly repelled a Russian overnight assault on a strategic eastern highway in Donetsk, said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region.
Russia has been attempting to capture the main road link between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut ‘‘for more than two months’’, he added, but ‘‘they still cannot control several kilometres of this road’’.
The likely resumption of major Russian attacks in Donbas came as its missiles continued to kill civilians in cities across the north, east and south of Ukraine, part of what appears to be a Kremlin strategy to spread fear hundreds of kilometres behind the frontline.
A Russian missile strike hit the northeast Ukrainian town of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv region overnight yesterday, killing three people including a woman of 70, and wounding three more, the regional governor said.
‘‘Four Russian rockets, presumably fired from around [the Russian city of] Belgorod at night, at about 3.30am, hit a residential building, a school and administrative buildings,’’ said Serhiy Bolvinov, the deputy head of Kharkiv’s regional police force.
‘‘The bodies of three people were found under the rubble. The victims are civilians.’’
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s secondlargest city, has seen especially severe bombardments in recent days, with Ukrainian officials and local commanders voicing fears that a second full-scale Russian assault on the northern city may be looming.