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| PHOTO: NARIMAN EL-MOFTY/AP |
Slovyansk in the eastern Donetsk region is Moscow’s next target after ‘operational pause,’ Ukrainian officials expect
Russian forces kept up artillery strikes in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, while the defending troops braced for what Ukrainian officials expect will be a new push toward this nearly empty city where separatists helped kick off the Moscow-backed uprising in Ukraine eight years ago.
Russian troops have lobbed artillery shells and missiles into Slovyansk and surrounding towns over the past day, keeping up pressure on a heavily fortified foothold still held by Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region.
One targeted missile strike hit an improvised military base in a factory in the village of Konstantinovka on Saturday afternoon, sending bare-chested Ukrainian soldiers running from the area after the explosion. A follow-up strike using cluster munitions minutes later missed its mark, landing instead in an adjacent residential neighborhood. It set fire to buildings, shred the bark off trees and blew out windows. Several civilians were rushed to the hospital.
In the city of Druzhkivka, predawn missile strikes hit the parking lot of a strip mall and a field next to some apartment buildings. Another missile landed outside of what appeared to be a military target, leaving a massive crater at the foot of a Soviet-era statue outside a machine-building plant. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Ukrainian and foreign observers said this week that Russia appears to be taking an “operational pause” from its offensive in Donbas, an area made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Wednesday that Russia hadn’t claimed or assessed any territorial gains in Ukraine for the “first time in 133 days of war,” but said such a pause doesn’t mean a “complete cessation of active hostilities.” --->READ MORE HERE
Russia is digging in for a protracted fight in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s forces are reinforcing its troops in Ukraine’s eastern provinces in preparation “for future offensive operations,” the UK Ministry of Defense said Saturday.
“Despite President Putin’s claim on 07 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” the statement said.
The intelligence assessment came amid growing reports of Russian soldiers and potential draftees looking to skip out on the conflict.
Danila Davydov, a 22-year-old artist from St. Petersburg, said he left Russia shortly after the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, over fears he could be drafted.
“I didn’t want to go to war or go to prison, so I decided to leave,” Davydo told Reuters from Kazakhstan. “I love Russia and miss it very much.”
Lawyers and human rights groups in Russia say cases like Davydo’s are growing and that more and more Russians are looking to avoid the war as the Russian military takes heavy casualties. Russia last updated its official death toll in Ukraine in late March, when it said 1,351 soldiers had died. Ukraine and Western Allies put the toll much higher, potentially more than 10 times that figure. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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