Kyiv: Ukrainian officials said Russian forces are intensifying their attacks in a fiercely disputed region of eastern Ukraine, in already difficult conditions for residents and rescue forces after the illegal occupation of Moscow and the declaration of martial law in Donetsk province. spoiling it. Ukraine’s governor Pavlo Kirilenko said the attacks had almost completely destroyed power plants serving the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar. They reported late Saturday that one civilian was killed and three were injured in the shelling. “The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kirilenko said in a state television interview.
Moscow-backed separatists controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the self-proclaimed republic of separatists was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to take over the entire province. While Russia’s ‘greatest brutality’ was concentrated in the Donetsk region, the ‘constant fighting’ continued elsewhere along the front line that extends for more than 1,000 kilometers (620 mi), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video. said in the address.
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According to the presidential office, between Saturday and Sunday, Russia fired four missiles and 19 airstrikes affecting more than 35 villages in seven regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south. Russia has focused on striking energy infrastructure over the past month, causing power outages and rolling outages across the country. In the capital, Kyiv, there were plans to roll out hourly blackouts on Sunday in various parts of the city of about 3 million and the surrounding region, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, state of Ukraine also planned rolling blackouts was created. -Ukrainergo, the proprietary energy operator, said in a Telegram post.
More positive news was the reconnection of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported on Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant required electricity to maintain a critical cooling system, but it was running on emergency diesel generators after Russian shelling broke its external connections. In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, about 15,000 remaining residents were living without daily shelling and water or electricity, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombing intensified after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
In Kharkiv, officials are working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office Dmitro Chubenko said in an interview with local media. He said DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies found in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched to relatives and so far only 80 people have attended.