Ukraine forces kill over 1,000 Russian troops
Ukraine said Friday it had carried out a series of successful attacks on the Russianoccupied eastern bank of the Dnipro river, killing more than 1,000 Russian troops.
“In cooperation with other units of the Defense Forces, (the marines) managed to gain a foothold on several bridgeheads,” Ukraine’s Marine Corps said in a statement on social media.
The statement said more than 1,000 Russian forces were killed during the operations and that over 1,200 pieces of hardware had been destroyed, claims that Agence France-Presse could not independently verify.
Moscow has admitted Kyiv’s forces had gained a foothold in the said area.
Deadly Kherson attack
Multiple Russian shelling attacks in and around the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday killed three people and injured at least a dozen, the region’s governor said.
Kherson was recaptured by Ukrainian forces last year, but has been shelled relentlessly since by Russian forces from the opposite bank of the Dnipro river.
Three people died in separate shelling attacks throughout the day, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Morning strikes on the city killed a 68-year-old man, while an evening attack killed a 75-year-old woman in her apartment, he said in posts on social media.
Russian shelling on the town of Bilozerka, about eight kilometers west of Kherson, killed one person and injured four others during the day.
The evening strike also injured eight people — six of whom were hospitalized — and caused partial power outages in the frontline city, Prokudin said in a post on social media.
Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, said it had downed one cruise missile and 16 out of 18 Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russian forces overnight.
Marines gain foothold in eastern bank of Dnipro river.
Russia is likely to increase air strikes against energy targets.
The announcement came after a Ukrainian energy supplier, DTEK Group, said Russian shelling had damaged grid infrastructure in a frontline region, without specifying where.
The group said the shelling had caused “serious” damage but there were no casualties.
Kyiv has warned Russia is likely to increase air strikes against energy targets ahead of the winter, as it did last year.
Fighting for munitions
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that deliveries of key artillery shells to his country had dropped off after fighting erupted between Israel and Hamas last month.
Israel, which receives United States military support, has relentlessly pounded the Gaza Strip since Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented assault on southern Israel last month.
“Our deliveries have decreased,” Zelensky told reporters, referring specifically to 155-millimeter shells that are widely used on the eastern and southern frontlines in Ukraine, saying “they really slowed down.”
“It’s not like the US said: we don’t give Ukraine any. No! It’s just that everyone is fighting for (stockpiles) themselves,” he told reporters.
“Now the warehouses are empty or there is a legal minimum that a particular state cannot give you,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv.