The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- James Richards
The Russian offensive is concentrated in four different parts of the Donetsk region, with the “fiercest battles” in the cities of Bakhmut and Mariinka, according to the Ukrainian military’s General Staff.
Russia conducted unsuccessful offensive actions in Bakhmut and the Avdiivka and Mariinka areas, it said. Russian forces claimed earlier Wednesday that they had taken the village of Kamianka, north of Avdiivka, where Ukrainian forces have been surrounded on three sides for several months.
Further south — where observers expect a Ukrainian counteroffensive to be focused — Russian forces are conducting “defensive operations in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions,” and had carried out a number of airstrikes, the General Staff said.
Settlements close to the front lines had also been shelled, including 35 airstrikes and four attacks from MLRS [rocket systems] on the positions of Ukrainian troops and settlements of the Kherson region, it added.
The General Staff also claimed that Russians were evacuating civilians in the town of Tokmak in the Zaporizhzhia region to ”terrible living conditions” further south. “Russian occupiers, under the pretext of evacuating civilians, continue to take away looted property from the front-line settlements of the Zaporizhzhia region,” it said, adding that medical institutions in the city of Enerhodar had been looted.
The Ukrainian air force had carried out several strikes, it said, including against a Russian electronic warfare unit. The Ukrainians appear to be trying to disrupt both Russian military communications and electronic warfare capabilities ahead of a counter-offensive.
