Russia attacks 2 key eastern Ukraine cities

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern region of Donetsk and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military and local officials said.

Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered key targets of Russia’s offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

“In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation,” the Ukrainian armed forces general staff said on Facebook.

The last Russian strike on Slovyansk was July 30, but Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions around the city in expectation of new fighting.

“I think it won’t be calm for long. Eventually, there will be an assault,” said Col. Yurii Bereza, head of the volunteer National Guard regiment.

Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 others in the Donetsk region in the last day, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram.

The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after Russian rockets fell on a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow’s troops seized it early in the war.

“After midnight, the Russian army struck the Nikopol area with [Sovietera] Grad rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery,” Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.

Another Russian missile attack overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city and leaving residents without electricity.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned last week that the situation was becoming more perilous day by day at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

“Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated” at the plant, he said. “What is at stake is extremely serious.”

Experts at the U.S.based Institute for the Study of War said Russia is shelling the area intentionally, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position.”

The Ukrainian company operating the nuclear power station said Saturday that Russian troops are using the plant’s basement to hide from Ukrainian shelling and have barred its Ukrainian staff from going there.

In the Kherson region south of Mykolaiv, the deputy mayor of the Russiaoccupied city of Nova Kakhovka was in critical condition after an assassination attempt, the Russian state news agency RIANovosti said, citing the deputy head of the Kherson region, most of which is under Russian control.

North of Istanbul, the first of three more ships carrying thousands of tons of corn from Ukraine anchored Saturday and was awaiting inspection, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. The joint inspection center was set up to get grain blocked in Ukraine to the world. Inspectors check that outbound ships carry only grain, fertilizer or related food and that inbound ships are not carrying weapons.

Meanwhile, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones, Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said, adding that Iran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian army.