Fighting on Ukraine’s eastern front ‘exceptionally tough’ as Russian forces press forward

Ukraine’s top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday he spent several days on the eastern Pokrovsk front and described fighting there as “exceptionally tough”.
Russia has been pressing hard towards the strategic hub of Pokrovsk in recent months, steadily inching forward.
The scale of assaults did not drop after Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s west Kursk region on August 6th. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the situation near Pokrovsk was “extremely difficult” and Kyiv would further strengthen its positions.
“Fights are exceptionally tough. The enemy throws into battle everything that can move and advance, trying to break through our defences,” Mr Syrskyi said on Facebook.
He said the most intense clashes were taking place in the area of Krasnyi Yar, some 10km from the city of Pokrovsk.
Eastern outskirts of Hrodivka village, less than 9km from the strategic route connecting the city to Kostiantynivka, were also seeing intensified assaults, Mr Syrskyi added.
Ukraine’s general staff put the number of clashes in Pokrovsk front at 23 since the start of the day.
Mr Zelenskiy said on Telegram on Thursday he was briefed by his top military on the situation during a meeting that also discussed “concrete defensive actions”.
He added that domestically produced long-range weapons were discussed in a separate meeting, as well as the Kursk incursion.
“Operation tasks are being implemented,” he added.
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Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s military said it had attacked an artillery depot and two oil storage facilities in Russia, causing a fire on Wednesday at the Atlas oil depot in the southern Rostov region.
The military said it had also attacked the Zenit oil facility in Russia’s Kirov region, some 1,500km northeast of the border with Ukraine. A field artillery depot in the Russian region of Voronezh was also attacked, it added in the same message on the Telegram app.
Russian authorities said on Wednesday Ukrainian drones had caused a fire at a Rostov oil depot and did not report any casualties, while Kirov regional governor Alexander Sokolov said a drone attack on an oil products depot in the town of Kotelnich did not cause a blaze or any casualties.
In Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, governor Alexander Gusev said debris from a Ukrainian drone had caused a fire to break out “near explosive objects” but they did not explode.
Kyiv says its attacks aim to destroy energy, transport and military infrastructure key to Moscow’s war effort.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the 30-month-old war launched by Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Ukrainian forces destroyed 60 out of 74 Russian attack drones and two out of three missiles launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Thursday.
“Aviation, anti-aircraft missile troops, electronic warfare and mobile fire groups of the Ukrainian Air Force and Defence Forces were involved in repelling the air attack,” it said on the Telegram messaging app.
One civilian was killed and another two were injured in Ukrainian shelling of the town of Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod region, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday.
Russia’s Monday drone and missile attack forced Ukraine to disconnect several nuclear power units from the grid, a Ukrainian mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday.
The mission said in a note to the IAEA that Russia continued to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, intending to disrupt the operation of its nuclear power plants and posing a significant risk to the stable operation of nuclear facilities. – Reuters