War in Ukraine: Kyiv continues the Kherson offensive and forces the Russians to reinforce defenses – News

“At this moment, the active phase of the offensive of the Ukrainian army that we have been waiting for has begun,” Kirill Strimosov, deputy head of the administration installed by Russia in the Kherson region (southern Ukraine), Kirill Strimosov, told the Russian audience. the television.

According to the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, the Ukrainian army will gather about 60,000 soldiers who are currently stationed in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.

The pro-Russian representative tried to downplay the situation and stressed that the Russian army was “ready to repel all these attacks and to resist to the end.”

According to Strimosov, today the Ukrainian side has chosen artillery duels that are concentrated in the areas around the city of Dudchane, located on the right bank of the Dnieper River, which is still under the control of Russia.

Ukrainian strikes activate the air defense systems over Nova Kakhovka, where two explosions were heard, and no damage was reported.

The dangers of the Ukrainian attack forced the interim governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, to ask Russia to help evacuate civilians last Thursday, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Gusnolin confirmed that Moscow would provide free accommodation to the refugees.

This comes after the recent significant territorial losses incurred by the Russian army in the face of the Ukrainian advance, which managed to recover more than 1,000 square kilometers in this Ukrainian region.

To the north, along the Dnieper River, in the Ukrainian regions of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, Russian forces are also in a defensive position, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Ground Forces reported today.

“In the Novobavlovsk (Mykolaiv) and Zaporizhia directions, the enemy did not take any offensive measures and continued to draw defensive lines and positions. Mortars, cannons and artillery rockets were fired in more than 20 regions,” asserted the Ukrainian command, which reported that they caused heavy losses to the Russian troops.

The Ukrainian military also reported that “a large number of the wounded are being taken to hospitals in medical facilities in the temporarily occupied territories.”

“Hospitals are overcrowded in the city of Tokmak in the Zaporizhia region,” the same source said.

According to the testimonies of local residents cited by Kyiv, “hospitals (in areas occupied by Russia) do not accept civilians due to overwork of doctors and lack of beds.”

The military entity added that due to the lack of “medical care and the refusal of the leadership of the Russian occupying forces to evacuate the seriously wounded to Russian territory, the death rate exceeds 50%.”

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed, in the early hours of Friday morning, that it “has stopped the preparations of the Ukrainian army” for a landing operation in the area of ​​the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant controlled by Russian forces.

As a result of this action, “more than 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed,” five speed boats, two barges, two tanks and four armored vehicles were destroyed, said a spokesman for the Russian command Igor Konashenkov.

However, the Russian attack on a power plant in Kyiv this morning has jeopardized the electricity supply in the capital and the region, which could be vulnerable to emergency outages.

The enemy launched another barbaric attack on the vital infrastructure. As a result, the installation of energy infrastructure in the Kyiv region suffered severe damage,” the state-owned energy company Uknergo reported.