Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Maj. He warned that using those missiles on targets outside the current war zone would “trigger immediate strikes on the decision-making centers on the territory of Ukraine.” He didn’t elaborate and didn’t provide any evidence to support his claim, similar to his government’s earlier threats objecting to deployment of other Western weapons. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged that Ukraine plans to use U.S.-made HIMARS and U.K.-provided Storm Shadow missiles to attack Russian territory, including Crimea. It claimed many Ukrainian diplomats are unwilling to return home after their tours and want refugee status in the European Union and Asian countries where they worked. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its acronym SVR, invited Ukrainian diplomats stationed abroad to come to Russia with their families to avoid returning to Ukraine. Svitan said the Zaporizhzhia region appears to be the focus of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, seeking to smash through Russia’s land corridor with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to breach the dam earlier this month while under Russian control, according to information obtained by The Associated Press. The flooding removed the need for the Kremlin’s forces to protect about 300 kilometers (180 miles) of the more than 1,000-kilometer (680-mile) front line, according to Svitan, and allowed Moscow to increase its military density in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions where intensive fighting is occurring. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported late Tuesday in a video address that earlier in the day, in Kherson, Russian artillery shelling killed one flood rescuer and wounded several others. Russia has relocated about 20,000 troops from the areas in the Kherson region after flooding from the recent Kakhovka Dam collapse made it impossible for Ukraine to conduct an offensive there, Ukrainian military analyst Roman Svitan said. Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, reported Tuesday that in the south, Ukrainian soldiers are advancing in some places but in others, “the enemy is advancing.” She cautioned against measuring progress in the counteroffensive ”solely by kilometers or the number of liberated settlements,” without stipulating what criteria would be more accurate. Russia shelled 15 cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding five civilians, including three in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s presidential office. Heavy battles are taking place in eastern Ukraine, around Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka, the Ukrainian armed forces said. Russia has also mustered a large number of reserves, Zaluzhnyi said in a post accompanying a video of him visiting front-line positions with other senior officers. The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. “There is a general lack of air defense assets to cover a country like Ukraine,” according to Lviv Gov. The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defense assets to cover such a broad area, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.Īir defense systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he said. The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions that extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland. Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, with Ukrainian air defenses shooting down about a dozen of them. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones Russia launched early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war.
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